Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

Photo: Hardcover book from its Goodreads page.

Very long fantasy / morality tale, mostly well-written, with a little more craft than usual, which I don't mean in a bad way. The story pace and structure is similar to Under the Dome, as it's more of a series of things that are happening between lots of different characters, most of them not fantastic or scary. As in both long books, there is an underlying mystery behind them (Why is the dome happening? Is it a test? Why are the cocoons happening? Are they a test?) that probably won't surprise you when it concludes, but the reading pleasure is watching it get there.

I wasn't particularly swayed by the sudden change of heart of the other major character, if you will, who is the foil/antagonist to the Clint, the prison psychiatrist. It ends the way it does, and that's fine, but this guy's primary character trait just sort of dissipates. It didn't ruin anything for me, but it didn't jettison me towards the ending, either. Which is fine.

The characters are well drawn and fleshed out, though you wouldn't know one of them was a minority if the book didn't flat out tell you. That may be part of the point of the book, or it may be a fault in character development. You'll be the judge. You'll also have to judge about Evie's character, which is largely and purposely kept in the dark. The authors don't supply too many answers about her, except that she is maybe The Day the Earth Stood Still for the menfolk, I guess.

The premise will keep you thinking the most, I suppose. It's an interesting premise that nonetheless has many flaws. It's very heavy on the idea that most men suck for many reasons, and that women are primarily their victims. You won't get any argument from me on either point, except to say that I have known my share of unthinking and unfeeling women as well, though of course they by and large do not cause as much danger and damage towards men as men have towards women. (Though I'm thinking right now of a couple who were up there, almost manly in their destructiveness.)

I'm not sure it's helpful to broadly generalize like this, though of course there's no argument about the fact that, overall, generally, men have treated women like garbage since the first caveman struck a cavewoman over the head with his club and thought that was love. It wasn't, and it isn't, and men have been pretty stupid about it ever since. But, again, I know plenty of women who have been stupid about love, too, amongst them the women who defend men who are stupid about love. We could go back and forth on this forever, which is the problem with overreaching generalizations. It's not helpful to talk overall, generally, about anything. Every man is not an asshole just like not every woman is a victim. More men, of course, are violent assholes than are women, and more women, of course, are victims of violent assholes than are men.

But it's probably less productive to grossly generalize. It's maybe more productive to single out the assholes amongst the men, rather than insist that all men are assholes. We're not all Harvey Weinstein or O.J. or even much less examples of them. There are some very, very good guys out there who have always treated women well. Probably it's better to single out the major and the minor assholes out there and then simply stay away from them, or give them treatment, etc. This book never presents that as an option, as it paints a broad stroke over all the guys, including the two main characters, who could not be more different in temperament, but who are both painted the same colors anyway.

The book does end on a realistically melancholic note, as things fall apart because the center could not hold for anyone. You may wonder at the ending, and if the decision made at the end would really be made. That'll have to be up to you, as well. Until then you've got a fantasy / morality tale, with a very large dose of Walking Dead as the prison was under siege. In the end, this one is good, not great, not especially memorable outside of its premise, and a quick read despite its large size.

The Girl Who Takes An Eye for an Eye -- Lisbeth Salander and Book Review

Photo: from the book's pic on my Goodreads review page

A bit of a letdown after Lagercrantz's excellent previous The Girl in the Spider's Web, his continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. This one takes a loooooooooong time to get going--more than half the book, I'd say. It's a little dull and plodding; only the faith that it would all mesh explosively at the end kept me going. And that mostly didn't happen, either.

It's extremely dry writing, more so than the already dry Nordic Noir usually is. I don't know if it's the original writing, or the translation, but I think it's the first, because there's only so much spicing up you can do with original material. It's very straightforward, lots of simple sentences, with no feel for its own drama. It's like a book-length newspaper article. It's interesting, but the reader should figure out the twin twist long before the author finally gets there. And because it's so drawn out, the reader should get the minor twin twist long before the author also gets there. There are no surprises here.

It's also very bloodless, though the three women of the story--Salander, a psychopathic baddie she meets in prison (and what the hell was Lisabeth doing there?) and a victim also in that prison--do come away extremely black and blue. Salander actually should've gotten a ton of broken bones, but somehow doesn't. And two characters survive a major stabbing, and they both crawl into the forest and survive. While Salander suffers quite a bit here, Blomkvist sleeps around with almost everyone.

In fact, I would've given this one two stars but for the truly great epilogue--three freakin' pages that save the book and show Salander at her most true form, really being her. By far it's her most honest scene, the Salander we've grown to appreciate and respect. Too bad she's not allowed to be like this at all throughout the book until this point. If you feel like stopping short on this one (and I almost wouldn't blame you), do me and yourself a favor and read the epilogue before you put it down for good. You don't have to read the whole book to fully appreciate it, either.

Decay and Disgust in 1664 London -- The Sweet Smell of Decay, a Book Review

Photo: from the book's Goodreads page.

I really liked this book despite its inconsistency. Some parts are very well-written, and some...well, aren't. Very odd. You can get a paragraph or two, or a few pages, with exceptional prose, or description; but then suddenly you get a dead-weight clunker of a paragraph, or sometimes just a line or two. There are shifts in tone, too. Suddenly--and I mean you can hear the screeches--a character becomes shady. Suddenly a scene changes, or you can't see it clearly. Towards the end there's a well-drawn action scene--and then suddenly you're at a trial, and it's very drawn-out. And the main character, Harry Lytle, does this and does that, and seemingly never stops, to do anything, and you realize that can't be, and it all doesn't come together, but it's okay because you're reading about yourself going through the motions as Lytle, and that's enough. In fact, that's the point, and undoubtedly the author's intent.

Very tough to explain.

But despite it all, you have a main character who is likable in his opaqueness. Who is he? What does he do? Not really ever explained, but he's a common enough bloke, and he's supposed to be you, the reader. He's just accessible enough to be us. We're the ones doing what he's doing, seeing what he's seeing. That transition is so seamless, you don't even realize it happened.

1664 London is really the main character, and it is supported well. The mystery isn't really mysterious. (The plot is more of a mystery, if you know what I mean.) It's all explained at the end, not very well, as the bow falls off and isn't neatly tied. But you won't care, because you're there for the sights and sounds of 1664 London, and you will get a lot of that, and you'll like it. The logistics of the ending is a head-scratcher, as are all of the characters when they take off their wigs to check for lice. Everyone's bald, and everything's filthy and gross, and 1664 London is just a disgusting place, where people get hanged but don't die, and their intestines are ripped out and burned and they don't die, and they're then tied hand and foot to horses and ripped apart, and if they still don't die, they're carted in a wheelbarrow to the nearest river and dumped in. And then their heads are stuck on a pike on a bridge or tower. And a prisoner about to die this way soils his pants, and that's described, and you realize that's what you're reading this for--the details, like you're there in 1664 London, and you're happy to be there by reading about it, because you sure as hell wouldn't really want to be there.

That's why this book works. If you like the history of historical fiction more than you like the fiction of historical fiction, you'll like this one. I'm on to the next, A Plague of Sinners.

Goodbye 2015 -- Affluenza

Photo: Ethan "Affluenza" Couch. By the Associated Press, December 28, 2015

And, his mother, also from the AP.  Read about them below. For the whole article, go here.

Good riddance to 2015!  Say goodbye to:

Ethan Couch, who drunkenly plowed into a disabled vehicle and the 4 people servicing it, all of whom died. This happened when he was 16, in Texas. During the sentencing phase, his lawyer said he suffered from "affluenza" because his parents were so rich and had spoiled him so much, he didn't know right from wrong. This apparently worked, because the judge gave him 10 years' probation! Rather than feeling responsible, he attended a party where alcohol was served, though in fairness the video does not show him drinking any. I don't know if that matters in terms of his probation, though. I'm guessing it violates it, because soon he and his mother threw a going-away party, then split for Mexico, crossing the border in an SUV (and after paying someone off, because I don't think people on probation can leave the country without permission, which he wouldn't have gotten because he missed a mandatory court date and a rehab stint). U.S. authorities finally tracked them down because they'd ordered a pizza over the phone, possibly with a credit card. The mother was flown back to L.A. and arrested (While living together after her divorce, she placed her son's bed in her own bedroom, saying he was her "protector."  Ewwwwww!!), but Couch won an appeal in a Mexican court, and is still in Mexico, fighting extradition. The prosecutor said this could take anywhere between a few days, to a few months, to perhaps years.

This nauseating story speaks for itself. But I have to ask: That judge gave him 10 years' probation (and a stint in rehab) for killing four people and crippling two others--if he did so because he believed Couch was too rich and too spoiled to know right from wrong, then doesn't this judge also have to give stupefyingly light sentences to someone very poor, who grew up so poor and abused that he also didn't know right from wrong?

Just sayin'.

So, Affluenza Ethan Couch, goodbye, man. And, by the way, that Mexican detention center you're in until the extradition mess gets worked out--that can't be any better than any American juvie center or rehab for rich kids. Again, just sayin'.  Oh, and one more thing: Do these two look haunted by their misdeeds to you? That first one is a sociopath if I've ever seen one. And the mom? Proud of it all.

More Goodbye 2015 entries to come. Why do you want to say goodbye to 2015?