Etiquette and Espionage, by Gail Carriger

Title: Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1)
Author: Gail Carriger
Year of Publication: 2013
Length: 320 pages
Genre: YA steampunk
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4 stars

I was super-excited to get my hands on Ms. Carriger’s latest novel, her first foray into YA fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed her Parasol Protectorate series, and I’m so glad that she’s decided to continue on in this world even though she wrapped that series up. Etiquette & Espionage did not disappoint me.

Sophronia, a fourteen-year-old youngest daughter in the 1850s, is unusual. She climbs dumbwaiters and gets herself into terrible fixes and is generally an embarrassment to her family, a socially-aspirant gentry . Little does her mother know that when she packs Sophronia off to finishing school, she’s actually giving the girl just what she needs. Her unusual new circumstances first become apparent when she chats with Dimity, also headed to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, and her brother Pillover, destined for Bunson and Lacroix’s Boys’ Polytechnique. As Dimity chatters cheerfully about evil geniuses, covert recruits, Picklemen, and Custard Pots of Iniquity, Sophronia begins to suspect something is odd. When her carriage is attacked by flywaymen, their escort goes into unconvincing hysterics, and Sophronia has to take command of the horses and rescue them all, her suspicions are rather confirmed.

It turns out that Sophronia has landed at a school designed not only to turn her into a lady but to turn her lethal as well. Or, rather, the Academy has landed at her — for it’s a floating school, suspended from enormous balloons. A werewolf named Captain Niall (!) serves as ship-to-ground transport and teaches combat, a vampire covers history and deportment, mechanical staff patrol the hallways as prefects, the students learn poisons and manipulation alongside powders and manners, and the headmistress has no idea that any of it is going on. Sophronia begins to settle in at the Academy and into an easy friendship with Dimity, though she has more trouble with the others in her dormitory. Sidhaeg (!) is prickly and recalcitrant, Agatha a shy wallflower, Preshea a snob, and Monique is none other than their escort, demoted back to debut rank for refusing to give up the whereabouts of the mysterious “prototype” which the flywaymen were after. Sophronia and Monique do not get on at all, and their rivalry drives much of the action in the book. Sophronia also uses her climbing abilities to sneak into the restricted areas, where she makes friends with the sooties who keep the ship running, including Soap, a London-born boy of African descent (and props to Carriger for including a non-white character in an English historical novel!). Sophronia, never having seen a black person before, is startled by him at first but gets over it quickly. The two become friends, and Soap introduced her to Vieve (!), niece to Professor Beatrice Lefoux (!) and a budding inventor. As the plot progresses, Sophronia finds them tremendously useful in her various schemes and maneuvers.

I felt as though the story bobbled a bit at the end of the first act and the beginning of the second. There’s a stretch where the sense of character isn’t particularly strong. It is interesting to have a leading character who is so introverted and private, but it also damages the narrative a bit, at least for me. When the POV character is not particularly reflective or emotive, I (a consummate extrovert) find it harder to engage with her. It was hard to feel emotionally connected to Sophronia, and sometimes her actions seemed very abrupt because there had been little build-up to them. I admire that Sophronia is such a practical and plain-dealing heroine, but I could’ve used a larger window into her soul.

The other problem that I had was that when Sophronia first arrives at the floating school, she has absolutely no idea what’s going on, and no one will tell her. Maddeningly, nothing gets explained for a very long time. After a while, this starts to frustrate me as a reader — and I recognise that not everyone may feel this way. It’s a valid literary trope and one frequently used in YA, but I personally struggle with it. I hate being left totally in the dark. It tends to make me rush, hoping I’ll get to the explanation, but then I end up having to go back and re-read chapters in case I missed something. I understand delaying gratification and teasing the reader, but some information in this book gets played a little too close to the chest.

There are still a lot of questions left unanswered at the end of the book, and I’m hoping we’ll get more information on them in future installments — I want to know why this extraordinary pair of schools exists. Right now, the answer seems to be “just because.” I find that unsatisfying. What need does England have for an elite cadre of female assassins and a coterie of admittedly evil geniuses? What role in society are they fulfilling? For what purpose? If the Headmistress has no idea what’s going on, who does? Who drives this whole thing? Who founded it? For what reasons? I love Carriger’s world-building, but I wish we’d gotten just a little bit more on this front at the outset.

I did think, though, that I saw a glimmer of potential for change in the school’s directives, one that I hope we’ll see expanded in future books in the series. Right now, the school seems quite competitive, designed to set these ladies against each other. Sophronia, though, sees more benefit in bringing her cohorts together, drawing on their disparate skills to achieve a communal goal. I would like to see that theme develop further. So much popular opinion, especially when it comes to teenage girls, likes to promote their potential for cattiness, sniping, and backstabbing; I would love to see more YA fiction promoting healthier ideas on what they’re capable of.

The second half of the book improves greatly, though, as a few things do finally get explained and as more action enters the narrative in the final act. Sophronia deduces that Monique must have hidden the prototype at Sophronia’s family home while collecting her, and so she determines to retrieve it with the help of her friends (and new pet, mechanimal dog Bumbersnoot). Sophronia’s skills really get to shine here, and the sense of action and excitement is wonderful fun.

For anyone who wondered why I (!)ed a few times in this review, it’s because there are several connections in Etiquette & Espionage to the Parasol Protectorate series. This book is set some twenty-odd years before that series begins, so there’s a lot of potential for crossover cameos. Even the MacGuffin of the book, the prototype, is a component of technology that becomes crucial by the time of the Protectorate series. Carriger also takes a few moments to poke fun at the steampunk world in general, through a clique of boys at Pillover’s school, the Pistons, who sew gears to their clothing for no reason but fashion, smudge their eyes with kohl, and like to crash parties and spike the punch. It’s a good-natured and, let’s face it, well-deserved ribbing.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with Etiquette & Espionage. There were a few bumps that kept it from perfection, in my opinion, but — that’s true of the first couple Harry Potter books as well. For a first foray into YA fiction, Carriger’s done a lovely job. I absolutely devoured this first installment, and I’m excited to see where the rest of the series goes.

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld

Title: Leviathan
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 448 pages
Genre: YA steampunk
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 3.5 stars

I hoped for more out of this book.

I like the story. It’s an interesting premise and a great use of steampunk themes to build an alternate universe. Leviathan re-envisions the start of World War I as a conflict between two pathways of technological development. The Darwinists, in England, France, and Russia, have gone into biodevelopment, discovering things like DNA coding a bit ahead of time, and using that knowledge to create fantastical new creatures. Airships made out of floating air-whales with other creatures grafted on, balloons out of jellyfish/blowfish type things, lizards who can memorise and deliver messages, wolf-dog-tiger hybrids for security or searching. The Clankers, in Germany/the Holy Roman Empire (still hanging on, apparently) and most of Eastern Europe, have chosen traditional mechanical technology, viewing Darwinist creations as hellish abominations.

The trouble is that, well… there sort of just wasn’t enough there. I know it’s a YA book, but that’s really no excuse. Plenty of authors manage to write YA novels and still use sophisticated storytelling devices. The later Harry Potter books are probably the most famous example, but the honest-to-goodness best example is probably Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Westerfeld’s style is a bit slapdash for my preferences. The vocabulary is basic, the sentence structure largely unvaried, the characterisation fairly flat. This disappointed me, and it’s not just because I’m an adult reading a YA book — it would have disappointed me just as much at age 11. You don’t have to write simply to tell a story on a level that young people will understand. (Quite the opposite, I’ve always thought — half the point of reading is to stretch your brainpan out a bit, to introduce new things rather than just dumping in what it’s already familiar with, and that goes for the language itself as much as for the story).

I found myself wishing that the book either had a lot more illustrations — I think it would’ve worked brilliantly as a graphic novel — or a lot fewer, with a lot more verbal description. It seemed in many places as if the illustrations were serving as a crutch for insufficient description in the text. This is particularly true of the Darwinist creations, which I found a little confusing to follow. I can tell there are good ideas there, that the dynamics of how these things operate has been thought out — I just sometimes had trouble following along with exactly what those dynamics were. It became clearer with illustration, but still not perfectly so.

I still haven’t said anything about the actual plot yet, have I? Prince Aleksandr, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is fleeing after his parents’ assassination (the event that, y’know, starts World War I). His path improbably collides with that of Deryn, a British common girl with aspirations of aviation, who has disguised herself as a boy in order to join the crew of one of the dirigible-creatures. And… that’s pretty much the plot. It doesn’t really get to going much of anywhere in this first book. We meet the characters, we learn about the world, the war starts, there are adventures on the ground and in the air. That’s not to say nothing happens. Quite a bit happens, in your typical adventure-story sort of way. But it’s all rather thin and entirely unfinished — this is clearly the first book in a series, and it doesn’t wrap up on its own in any significant way.

So, this was a sort of interesting read, but not a really gripping one. I imagine I’ll get the next book the series eventually, but I’m in no rush. And when it comes to YA steampunk, I’ll be anticipating Gail Carriger’s new series a lot more.

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2010
Length: 390 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4.5 stars
Spoiler Warning: Armed and active for entire series

This book was not at all what I expected. And I sort of love it for that.

I knew right from the start that it wouldn’t be, that I wasn’t getting Return of the Jedi. District 13 is about as far from a utopian paradise as you can get. It’s a complete military state, to the extent that each citizen’s schedule for the day is temporary-tattooed on their arms when they wake up. Everyone has a place and a responsibility, cogs in a machine. Practical, but creepy — and it clearly rubs Katniss the wrong way. Fortunately, since she’s still classified as “mentally disoriented”, she can get away with not following orders all the time, but it doesn’t take her long to start finding out just how far she can push her new allies. They want to use her as the Mockingjay to unite all of the Districts in rebellion against the Capitol, but they’re having some trouble stabilising her moods, not to mention dredging her out of despair about Peeta. She’s pissed as hell that the rebel operatives chose to save her and leave him behind, and when she finds out he’s not dead but captured, controlled by Snow, she’s naturally pretty concerned for his safety.

So, a lot of the book is Katniss adjusting to life in 13, pushing her limits, and trying to come to terms with having to live up to the image the public has of her. What does it mean to be the Mockingjay? How can she be that and stay true to herself?

There’s something really beautifully subversive in this book, and I don’t just mean about that reversal of expectations. On the surface, this book seems to be so unlike the first two. The situations are entirely different. The characters have changed, some to be nigh-unrecognisable. But the mechanics are gruesomely similar. Katniss is still stuck in the Hunger Games. Only they’re playing for keeps now. The Games were, of course, always deadly serious to the 24 combatants, and to an extent to people in the Districts, but they were still so choreographed, so thoughtfully executed. War isn’t, even when you try. There’s no hope of begging aid from on high, of getting sponsors, just for being impressive. In war, reinforcements and supplies come only when you’ve planned for them, not dropped as if by magic out of the sky. Critical differences — but critical similarities, too. Collins, brilliantly, doesn’t harp on this theme much — but she lets it shine in tiny details (details that I’m wondering if they would be as apparent if I hadn’t devoured all three books in under 48 hours). Like when, during the mission in the Capitol, Katniss tries to reckon up who they’ve lost, repeats the list to herself, just as she did her list of opponents during the Games, to keep track — only now it’s not to keep track of who’s still a threat, but to remember who they’ve lost. Similarly, the Capitol broadcasts those suspected still alive (even when some are already dead), which echoes the projections of dead tributes during the Games. And then there’s how Katniss still has to play for the cameras, still has to put on a good show, not to win sponsors, but to keep up the spirits of the rebels in the Districts. She’s still styled, throughout the book, both in 13 and on the road, still putting on a show. Still accompanied by a camera crew (a rather morbid commentary, I feel, on our current 24/7 news cycles). Even down to those damn silver parachutes at the end, even down to what ultimately happens with Prim, so many details of this book echo the Games and the first book, but in such brutal, sadistic, horrifying ways.

I also enjoy how this book subverts so many expectations. Katniss doesn’t turn into a 100% badass warrior chick. The love triangle between her, Peeta, and Gale does not consume the story. The rebels are not necessarily the good guys. The story is not one of glory and triumph. It’s dark, definitely edgy, and occasionally hard to read. It’s a lot of psychological trauma for a young adult book to deal with, but I think Collins handles it pretty deftly. The subversion of the romance angle is particularly nice. Gale turns out to be just a little too violently inclined, a little too gung-ho about playing just as rough and mercilessly as the Capitol does. Katniss isn’t sure what to do about that, and she clearly struggles with what these revelations about Gale’s character, about the man he’s grown into, mean for any potential future between them. Meanwhile, Peeta has been brainwashed by the Capitol via a form of psychological poison. By the time the rebels retrieve him, he thinks Katniss is a genetically engineered abomination trying to kill them all, and he nearly strangles her. It’s a far cry from the contrived images of the happy couple they had to create earlier. Getting him back is a long, slow process, and with both Peeta and Katniss suffering some pretty severe PTSD, Collins isn’t shy about stating that neither one of them will ever come back completely. Part of them will always live in this dark world, in these terrifying circumstances. They will never be what they were before or who they were before. But that doesn’t mean they can’t salvage something out of the ashes. (Salvage is, incidentally, a pretty big although subtle theme throughout all three books).

There were some flaws. A couple of times the action jerked around so fast that I got a little lost and had to back-track to figure out just what had happened. A significant character’s death got sandwiched in a way that I nearly missed it entirely. And Katniss possibly spends just a little too much of the book out of it — either literally or psychologically. In some ways it’s effective, to display the effects all of this is having on her, but in some ways it’s just really frustrating to have your heroine and narrator continually knocked out of either consciousness or sanity.

This paragraph has an extra spoiler warning on it because it really is the granddaddy spoiler, since it’s about the ultimate endgame. So. Be ye warned.

I knew Katniss was going to have to kill Coin even before she knew it. Coin proved, so thoroughly, that she wasn’t any better than her opponent. Rule by 13 would have been no better than rule by the Capitol — just restricted in different ways. While the Capitol celebrates excess and indulgence, flinging human life away for entertainment value, 13 buckles everything down until there’s no room left to breathe. Individual life and choice don’t have any meaning there, either, but for completely different reasons. There, it’s all about serving the cause, being the well-functioning machine you’re meant to be. Each civilisation represents one end of the Evil Empire spectrum, but they’re both pretty horrific to consider.

What we come to learn is that, for District 13, this war was never about liberation, never about freeing the Districts from the yoke. President Snow was right about that — 13 could’ve helped them in the first rebellion, but instead they cut and ran. No, for District 13 and for Coin, this was about revenge and domination. She wanted her own empire to rule, larger and more satisfying than subterranean 13, and she didn’t care who she had to throw under the bus to get that. Individual life meant as little to her as to Snow; she would sacrifice whoever and whatever in order to win. With her out of the picture and someone saner at the wheel, there’s hope that Panem might yet turn into a functioning republic, as the District rebels hoped.

So. Overall, it’s hard to say I enjoyed this book, because so much of it was so painful. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t exquisite. Collins crafts a fantastic story in a complex world (a world that I’m sort of annoyed I still don’t know enough about, but that’s my own private obsession with dystopian world-building, there). Katniss is a remarkable heroine, who defies expectations at every turn — both of her handlers, her friends, and of the reader. She won’t be what anyone else wants her to be, and that includes us. I appreciate that. Collins has done something different, which is quite an achievement. I want more heroines like Katniss in the literary world.

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

Title: Catching Fire
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 391 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 4+ stars
Spoilers: Armed and active for both this and The Hunger Games; I don’t know how to talk about this book without them, unfortunately.

The last time I felt this way about a series was starting Harry Potter, back almost a decade ago. Nothing else in recent memory has matched the sheer irresistibility of this series. I’m a little floored, honestly, by how much I’m taken with this series and how desperately I need to move on to find out what happens. But I thought it important to pause and capture my thoughts now.

Catching Fire ups the ante in a big way. It continues more or less seamlessly on from the end of The Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta are expected to go on a Victory Tour around all of the Districts. The trouble is that unrest has been sizzling in some of them for a long time, and Katniss finds herself the inadvertent mascot of rebellion. No true uprisings have broken out yet, but you can feel them simmering, low-burning embers, all through this book. And that’s terrifying the living hell out of the Capitol. Enough so that the President himself feels compelled to visit Katniss and make a few well-placed threats against her family and friends.

This includes Gale, who was kind’a-sort’a Katniss’s boyfriend before she went to the Games, but who she’s had to treat as an amiable “cousin” ever since she got back, since her only thread of protection lies in being able to claim that love for Peeta made her act so defiantly. There’s a lot of emotional entanglement between the three of them, and I think it’s handled very well. It’s not overblown or made into the stuff of melodrama. Instead, all three act in the time-honoured manner of teenagers everwhere: with extreme awkwardness. They don’t know what to say to each other, how to act. And it doesn’t help that just as soon as poor Katniss is thinking she’s set her heart on one, the other will do something spectacular to sway her around again. And yet, all without turning her into just some pathetic chick.

Is it wrong of me to hope that Katniss will get to live polyamorously happy-ever-after with them both? Yes. Yes, it is. That would barely pass muster in fairly edgy adult fiction; it’s going to be another century or so before you could get away with that in young adult. What I then assume is that either Gale or Peeta has to die. So, then, is it wrong for me to hope that it’s Gale? Nothing against the guy at all, but he’s not the one we, the readers, have spent as much time with. My emotional investment lies far more in Peeta.

So. All of that’s going on, and then District Twelve has a really hard year. It’s partially to punish Katniss — law enforcement becomes really strict, the minor infractions (like hunting in the woods) that folk used to be able to get away with, they can’t anymore — and it’s partially just bad luck, from a really hard winter. Desperation’s sinking in, and even while Katniss feels the urge to rebel burning deep inside her… she can’t. Not with so many people relying on her. Not with so many innocent lives at stake.

And then the Capitol changes the rules on everyone again, and announces that for the 75th Hunger Games, they’ll be drawing only from a pool of prior victors — who are supposed to be exempt for life. The second half of the book deals with this. With no other female victor living, Katniss has to go for 12, and though their mentor Haymitch’s name is chosen, Peeta immediately volunteers to take his place. So they’re back, and have to quickly determine who among the other tribute-victors they might be able to trust at least long enough for a temporary alliance. The arena designed for the 75th Games is diabolical and utterly ingenious, and in some ways I wish they’d gotten to it earlier in the book in order to spend more time examining it.

Some other reviews I’ve seen charge that Catching Fire suffers from middle-of-trilogy syndrome and that it’s slow to get going, that too much time is spent on exposition in the beginning. I couldn’t disagree more. I think this book is superbly strong, and I don’t feel it has any of that lag. In fact, I sort of wish they’d spent more time on the Victory Tour, describing the various Districts — but that’s because I’m obsessed with world-building, especially in dystopias. I want to know everything. From what I can gather, District 4 is probably Gulf Coast (wherever the coastline actually is now), because their main industry is fishing. 3 seems like it might be Detroit-ish, as they focus on electronics and manufacturing. 7 seems like Wisconsin-Minnesota, timber country. 11 I can’t quite place, because it might be either the South or the Midwest. I’m guessing Midwest because the agriculture seems a bit more wheat-and-corn, though in Book 1 Rue does talk a lot about orchards — but also because, if part of the cataclysm leading to this world setup was rising waters, most of the agricultural south is probably under the Atlantic Ocean now. Anyway — I wish I knew more. I want to know about all the Districts, where they are, how many people, how they got to be the way they are. What we do learn along the way is that District 11 is much more strictly controlled than 12 has been, and that the people there seem to be getting sick of it.

So. This book is fabulous, the series is fabulous, I’m moving on to Mockingjay as fast as may be — and it looks like it’s going to have pretty much my favourite thing over. Not just a dystopia, but a dystopian rebellion. I am aquiver with excitement.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Year of Publication: 2009
Length: 374 pages
Genre: young adult – dystopian thriller
New or Re-Read?: New
Rating: 5 stars

It has been a long, long time since I tore through a book as quickly and as avidly as I tore through this one. The word for The Hunger Games is, absolutely, “compelling.” This is a book that grips you by the throat and doesn’t let go.

The book takes place in a dystopian future — which gets me right there. I love a good dystopia. North America as we know it has fallen to pieces, thanks to what the heroine vaguely describes as “the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.” The civilization that replaces America is called Panem, a cluster of districts ruled by the Capitol. There were once Thirteen Districts; now, after a failed rebellion, there are only Twelve, with the Thirteenth having been obliterated in the war. As a reminder to the Districts of its power, and to prevent further rebellions, the Capitol holds the Hunger Games each year. Each District sends two tributes each year, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18.

In coal-mining District 12 (probably situated in what was once West Virginia, based on the descriptions), Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her sister’s place when twelve-year-old Prim is chosen. The “reaping”, as the ceremony is grimly called, is a stark look at how the government can so easily manipulate poverty. A twelve-year-old has his or her name entered once, a thirteen-year-old twice, and so forth — but, you can also choose to enter your name more times in exchange for tesserae, allotments of grain and oil. This is a frequent occurrence in District 12, impoverished and struggling. Katniss has been her family’s provider since she was 11, when her father died in a mining accident and her mother slipped into a deep depression. She’s now sixteen, with her name put in 20 times; her friend Gale, with more siblings to support, has his name in 42 times. And yet it’s Prim, with her name only in once, because Katniss wouldn’t let her take on any more risk, who gets called.

And this is all just in the first few chapters.

Katniss goes to the Capitol to prepare for the games, along with Peeta, the male tribute from her District — a boy who once threw her bread when she was starving, near-death, before she learned to hunt and trap. They’re up against others like themselves, unwilling tributes who’ve never had a full belly in their lives, but they’re also up against tributes from wealthier Districts, where the Games are not a punishment but a chance for honor and glory, who’ve trained their whole lives for this moment. Katniss experiences the shock and confusion of being treated like a pampered pet even though she’s really a beast for slaughter, and through her eyes, we see the horrific, casual cruelty of a society that places enormous monetary value on her life but no spiritual or moral value on it whatsoever. Because the Hunger Games are entertainment, televised and trumpeted.It’s the Olympics as bloodsport. (It’s no surprise that everyone in the Capitol seems to have a Roman name — Flavius, Octavia, Cinna, Portia — because there’s certainly a smack of the Colosseum about the whole thing). The tributes have to compete not only against each other in the field, but also for sponsors, who can send them life-saving gifts during the Games — and the tributes who put in the best show during the opening ceremonies, training, and interviews. Katniss, both feisty and sullen, unable to conceal her resentment, is saved from making a total mess of things partially through her own audacity and partially through the machinations of the District 12 handlers, who manipulate circumstances so that Katniss and Peeta look like star-cross’d lovers. The burden for that is on Peeta (and for a long time Katniss isn’t sure if he really has feelings for her or if he’s just playing the game), but Katniss reaps some benefits of it, and eventually learns to work the angle herself.

The strength of this book is in the relentless way that Collins builds suspense. Even when Katniss is on something resembling “downtime”, healing from wounds, feeding herself, scoping out the lay of the land, it never feels as though the action slows down. There’s always another threat, always something else lurking on the horizon — and those things explode into action with magnificent force. The Games are a fascinating look at survivalism; the “Career Tributes” from the wealthy districts may know how to fight, but they don’t know how to hunt for food, find safe berries to eat, or bandage up their wounds. Eleven tributes are killed outright in the first battle, but from then on, it becomes a matter of playing advantages and covering for weaknesses. It’s gruesome, deeply troubling, heart-poundingly thrilling, and unexpectedly emotional. There was one moment that got to me, not because of who died or the way in which she did, but because of Katniss’s reaction to it — and the unexpected benefit that Katniss received afterwards. I don’t want to throw in a spoiler, but it’s a really poignant moment, and it made me tear up. And then it’s right back to breath-holding suspense.

So, this book is fantastic. Collins has created not only a fascinating dystopia, but also an eminently relatable heroine. I’m usually not a fan of first person narratives; they have to be done really well for me to like them. And this one is. Katniss’s voice is wonderful, practical and laced with sardonic humour, but you also get to hear her struggling with vulnerabilities she doesn’t want to admit to. She is not a perfect person, but she’s a tremendously engaging protagonist.

I know I’m late to the train, and I don’t know why. It wasn’t for lack of interest, I just somehow never got around to picking this book up. Probably no one actually needs my recommendation to read this book, as I suspect I was the last person in America not to have done so already. But if you do need it, here it is: Read this book. Immediately if not sooner. I’m off to get Catching Fire and Mockingjay right now, because I can’t stand not knowing what happens next.

The Cabinet of Curiosities, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Title: The Cabinet of Curiosities
Author: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Year of Publication: 2002
Length: 629 pages
Genre: mystery-thriller
New or Re-Read?: Re-Read
Rating: 4 stars

The Cabinet of Curiosities is one of the more sophisticated and subtle of the Pendergast thrillers. Despite the sci-fi element being more genuinely plausibility-straining and utterly critical to the story, you don’t feel it for most of the book. The sci-fi twist isn’t the point, and it doesn’t set the mood. This feels more like an old-time Victorian mystery — not least because the book takes a couple of speculative dips back in time.

In The Cabinet of Curiosities, construction for a new building unearths a gruesome charnal house, over a hundred years old. The skeletons are testament to America’s most prolific serial killer — whose crimes had never before been revealed or even suspected. This alone would be a fairly compelling story, but what really gets the attention of our usual assembly of heroes is when “copycat” crimes start popping up in New York City — men and women attacked and brutalized, part of their spinal cord removed, while they’re still alive. Though the NYPD considers these copycats to be inspired by the news about the archaeological site (and blames reporter Bill Smithback for breaking the story), Pendergast insists that the connection is far more direct and important than that.

The female lead and primary research in this book is Nora Kelly, girlfriend of Bill Smithback. (They meet in a spinoff novel, Thunderhead, which I was going to read ahead of this book before I realised I don’t actually own it). She serves more or less the same function as Margo Green, but she’s a character with a bit more bite to her. She and Pendergast are thwarted consistently: by Nora’s boss at the Museum, who doesn’t want her involved, by Anthony Fairhaven, the developer who owns the land on which the 130-year-old bodies were found, and by the New York Mayor’s office, who don’t want them upsetting Fairhaven, a significant political contributor. Nonetheless, Pendergast enlists the aid and wins the loyalty of policeman Patrick Murphy O’Shaughnessy — originally assigned as a liaison to try and slow Pendergast down, but who quickly joins in the hunt, feeling reinvigorated in his career by the detective work. And of course, Bill’s running around, picking up pieces of information, helping Pendergast in unexpected ways, and generally pissing off every authority figure he encounters. (I have, if it hasn’t become apparent yet, quite a soft spot for Bill Smithback).

Though the whole series has been retroactively dubbed the Pendergast series, and though Pendergast certainly played a critical role in Relic and Reliquary, this is the first book where it really does become his series. Not that that means we suddenly know everything about him. Even when you’re in his head, seeing things from his perspective, even joining him on some of his decidedly unusual meditations, Pendergast remains a cypher in so many ways — which is, of course, so much of what makes him so utterly fascinating as a character. We do get more tantalizing hints here, about his past, about his family, with its streak of madness, and about his unique methods, blending Eastern mysticism with modern forensics.

This is also the first book of the series where P&C kill off a character you really care about. I remember being thoroughly shocked when it happened, and when it became apparent that, yes, they really had killed him, this was not a fake-out (because P&C are also masters of misdirection). They dig in the knife and twist. It’s a habit they keep up in further books. (Someday, someone should do a body count of all their books, with a separate list of near-death-experiences).

This is a great thriller, a really chilly one, which easily blends modern science with metaphysical speculation. The healthy dose of Victoriana adds a delightfully macabre frisson to the story, a thread of the detective stories of previous generations. And, as always, P&C are great with character — they can sketch someone out in vivid detail in just a few pages, but they can also craft characters who are so deep, so complex, who can seem so real or nigh-supernatural. For all of these reasons, The Cabinet of Curiosities is among my favorite P&C novels, and I recommend it to all lovers of the mystery-thriller genre.

Buy ‘The Cabinet of Curiosities’ at amazon.com.

Reliquary, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Title: Reliquary  (Pendergast #2)
Author: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Year of Publication: 1997
Length: 480 pages
Genre: thriller
New or Re-Read?: Re-Read
Rating: 3 stars

This book is definitely a sequel. An entertaining and eminently readable sequel, but still, a sequel.

A couple of years after the horrific murders perpetrated by the ‘Museum Beast’, strange corpses start popping up across New York — corpses with their heads smashed in, cut off, or sliced open in some fashion, to get at precisely the hypothalamus — the part of the brain that Mbwun needed to eat in order to survive. The trouble is, this time it looks like there’s more than one monster. At first, no one pays much attention to it, because the first victims are drawn from New York’s massive homeless community. It’s only when a missing socialite turns up dead and headless in the Hudson that the story starts getting press — and that certain members of the NYPD, specifically Lieutenant D’Agosta, start putting the pieces together. Naturally, the re-emergence of this kind of serial killing brings Special Agent Pendergast back on the scene as well.

As the book progresses, we learn that Greg Kawakita, from Relic, discovered the secret of the Mbwun plant — that eating it could actually turn you into the monster creature, by means of a reovirus. He found out that the original explorer who found the Mbwun’s home territory and tribe must have been force-fed the plant and turned into the creature that terrorised the Museum years before. Kawakita then attempted to distill out the more physically horrifying genes, aiming to create a “purer” form of the reovirus, that would enhance the user’s sensory perception and intelligence without turning him into a reptilian-ape-creature-from-hell. Unfortunately, he started testing it before it was perfected, leading to a society of partially transformed mutants, mad with the need for their drug and turning increasingly murderous.

The most interesting aspect of Reliquary is, I think, the subterranean world of the homeless, too many to be counted, both victims and perpetrators of the ongoing crimes. The introduction of this hitherto hidden world is fascinating, from the paranoid intelligence of Mephisto to the survival tactics of the underground dwellers. This plot element also introduces us to Laura Hayward, a member of the NYPD specializing in rousting, who happens to be working on an advanced degree on the sociology of the homeless. I can’t remember if that particular focus comes back in later books, but whether her academic focus remains consistent or not, Hayward is a great character and an excellent addition to the series’s rotating cast.

This book introduces more of Pendergast’s unorthodox methods. He disguises himself as the head of a homeless community in order to meet with Mephisto, the king of the underground who gives Pendergast, reporter Bill Smithback, and D’Agosta information on what his people have seen of the mutant murderers. Later on, we see Pendergast operating as a one-man SWAT team, fully decked out in urban camo and carrying enough weaponry to invade a small nation. Really, if there’s anything Pendergast can’t do, we haven’t seen it yet.

Reliquary is readable but not critical to following the Pendergast series. It’s most notable for its addition of Laura Hayward, but other than that, you won’t miss much by skipping on to the far superior Cabinet of Curiosities. (I should mention that most of the novels function well enough as stand-alones, and do not need to be read in-sequence. I read them completely out of order on my first go – and I’m someone who that would usually drive crazy to do). There’s a lot that’s forgettable about this book, but benignly so.

Relic, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Title: Relic (Pendergast #1)
Authors: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Year of Publication: 1995
Length: 468 pages
Genre: sci-fi thriller
New or Re-Read?: Re-Read
Rating: 3.75 stars

The first book in the Pendergast series is just what it promises to be: a mystery-thriller with an intriguing sci-fi twist. Unusual, gruesome deaths are piling up at the New York Museum of Natural History, characterised by two disturbing traits: gaping chest wounds, like those inflicted by predatory animals, and missing brains — which appear to be eaten. Margo Green, a researcher at the Museum, finds herself at the center of the mystery, attempting to piece together scraps of information — hints from a disastrous mission to the Amazon, forensic clues, genetic oddities. At the museum, she works with her supervisor, Dr. Frock, and prodigy geneticist Greg Kawakita. On the law enforcement side of things, Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta is investigating the homicides, aided by the nigh-preternatural FBI Special Agent Pendergast. Pendergast, though his role is fairly small in this first book, is the focal point of this whole series of loosely-connected thrillers. Part James Bond, part Sherlock Holmes, wrapped up in the package of a Louisiana polymath. He’s a Gentleman and a Scholar who also knows several hundred ways to kill you. Margo’s also friends with Bill Smithback, a journalist who’s been hired by the Museum to write a book about the venerable institution — and who’s been chafing at the censorship imposed by the Museum’s head of public relations.

So. These are our protagonists. The first murders in the Museum seem a tragedy. But as the bodies start mounting, the situation becomes ever more dire –yet the Museum is determined to go forward with the opening night of a new exhibit, called Superstition. As it happens, one of the key pieces of this exhibit is a figurine of Mbwun, an Amazonian monstrosity who appears to have been worshiped (or at least venerated) by a remote tribe… and the figurine depicts a creature with traits that fit the profile of the murderer/murder weapons. And so rumours start to build of a Museum Beast, lurking in the bowels of the Museum… While D’Agosta and Pendergast are convinced by the scientists as to the increasing viability of this hypothesis, the Museum heads and the head of the New York FBI office aren’t buying it, and insist on going forward with the opening… setting the stage for a whole lot of trouble.

P&C have a talent for description, both atmospheric and characteristic. Though I have no doubt readers with a more intimate familiarity with the Museum of Natural History would get even greater enjoyment out of this book, they draw vivid enough pictures for those of us, like myself, who’ve only made brief passes through years earlier, or those who’ve never set foot in that museum at all. From the vast open hallways to the claustrophobic below-ground research labs, the sense of place is incredibly strong, as is the sense of mood — vitally important to a thriller. When the Beast pursues Margo, I could clearly visualise her dim, shadowy surroundings, I could feel Margo’s barely-controlled panic, I could hear the snuffling of the beast. P&C handle both stillness and chaos deftly.

The sense of character is also great. P&C have an ability which I often associate with Law and Order episodes — to evoke a very specific personality, with a distinct background, in a very short amount of time. Of course, by mid-book, you start strongly suspecting that anyone new introduced is probably going to be the next victim, but that’s not too much to overcome. The major characters all have complex backgrounds — which often aren’t even fully explored in this book (Pendergast’s less than anyone’s) — and while they certainly all have their flaws, it’s that psychological veracity that makes them so compelling. Many of these characters weave through P&C’s other novels, both within and outside of the Pendergast series, which makes returning to them, either in re-reads or when each new book comes out, rather like returning to old friends. These books often get compared to Michael Crichton’s work, and I think the strong characters are what actually make them better. They do the science, the thrills, and the mystery all very well, too, but the magnetic personalities are what bring me back to these books time and again.

Overall, this book is a fun, quick read and the start to a great series. It’s certainly not high literature — and it doesn’t need to be. But it is incredibly high-quality brain candy. I thoroughly recommend Relic, the rest of the Pendergast series, and all of P&C’s work, both as a pair and individually (and I’ll be reading and reviewing the rest over the coming months). Read them on the beach, on planes, at the park — read them when you’ve been working too hard and need to give your brain a treat. They’re a wonderful respite, and the most entertaining thrillers I’ve ever read.

Fever Dream, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Title: Fever Dream
Authors: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Year of Publication: 2010
Length: 528 pages
Genre: thriller
New or Re-Read?: New!
Rating: 4.5 stars

Okay, so. I love the Pendergast thrillers. I got hooked on them when I picked up The Book of the Dead by accident (the 7th book in the series, and third of an in-series trilogy), and then had to backtrack and put the rest of them in order. Someday, I’m going to start the series at the beginning and review them all on this blog, but I have quite enough re-read projects on my plate at the moment as it is. Maybe over the summer — these are great beach reads.

It seems perfectly valid, though, to go ahead and do a review now for Fever Dream, the 10th book in the series, which I got in the mail a couple of days ago and tore through in under 24 hours. (I wait for the paperbacks of these because I have a thing about matched sets, and since my first 8 books in the series were all mass markets… yeah, it would make me a little crazy to have hardcovers. So I have to torture myself by waiting for the paperback releases). It’s the first book in a new in-series trilogy, and it’s not so heavily dependent on what’s come before. One of the great things about these books, though, is that they all are stand-alone, even the ones within sets.

Readers of the Pendergast thrillers have long known that he had a wife, once upon a time, who met with a tragic accident while on a hunting trip in Africa. In Fever Dream, Aloysius Pendergast learns that the accident was actually murder. The opening chapters flashback to these events, and it’s… really quite brutal. P&C don’t shy away from the gruesome when occasion calls for it. Pendergast uncovers a previously overlooked detail, and this discovery sets him on a path to vengeance like none he’s ever pursued before. Naturally, he pulls in Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta, the closest thing to a best friend he has, to help with the investigation.

I won’t even try to hide the fact that I adore Agent Pendergast. He’s fascinating, and has been ever since he first showed up in a purely supporting role in Relic. The mix of ruthless FBI efficiency with genteel Southern charm just makes me swoon. He’s so full of odd quirks, peculiar habits, and contradictions. He shows more genuine emotion in Fever Dream than he’s shown before, even when dealing with his brother in an earlier trilogy — the resurfacing of emotions attached to his wife really seems to get to him. The readers experience him largely through D’Agosta in this book, and so we feel the bewilderment at seeing Pendergast come a little unhinged. I confess, it thrills me — there’s just something delicious about watching the iron control slip. Everyone describes Pendergast as cold, but it’s apparent here that there are deep passions in him — just ones that he’s spent a long time and a lot of effort burying. In Fever Dream, we see them threaten to boil over.

This book takes off like a rocket and doesn’t let up. I nearly had two heart attacks in the middle of it — because I know that P&C aren’t afraid to pull punches or kill off beloved characters. It’s the “no one is safe” threat, and it’s always real, so when something bad happens, it’s truly heart-stopping. Pursuing clues, Pendergast and D’Agosta ricochet from Louisiana to Zambia to Maine and back again. And I had been waiting for P&C to take Pendergast back to his native Louisiana. I’d been praying they would for years now. Most of the books take place in New York, though a few have had other settings — the Midwest, Europe, the Atlantic Ocean — but we’ve only gotten tantalizing hints of Pendergast in his homeland. When I heard Fever Dream would take place in Louisiana, I was overcome with excitement, and P&C didn’t disappoint me; Fever Dream is full of backwater towns and gator-ridden bayous. P&C handle the twists and turns deftly, never letting the pace slacken — precisely what you want from a thriller.

The other thing I so enjoy about P&C thrillers is that they always have a slightly sci-fi twist. It’s always within the realm of plausibility, but they make speculations about where modern science could go. In that way, their novels are somewhat like Michael Crichton novels — only with a suspense twist. In Crichton novels, the science is typically front-and-center; in P&C thrillers, it slides in sideways. Usually the main characters discover it as they go along, piecing improbabilities together, and that’s the case in Fever Dream, though in some other novels, we get the viewpoint of the involved scientists as well. Their sci-fi elements never create a new universe, it all fits in perfectly well with our version of reality, but it gives their novels that little extra kick that not all mysteries have.

I’ve also noticed that P&C have a fascination with mob violence. It shows in the Pendergast novels (Reliquary in particular) and in some of the stand alones (especially Preston’s Blasphemy). It’s a concept they explore again in Fever Dream. I confess, I was worried when the idea was introduced that it would take over the story, derail an already packed plotline — but it didn’t. P&C used it as an effective element and then let it drop naturally, rather than carrying it through past the point of usefulness.

Overall — I loved this book. P&C deliver brain candy of the very highest quality yet again. Fever Dream is a fast-paced rocket of a book, a thoroughly enjoyable entry into the series. The mystery of Helen’s murder isn’t fully solved by the end of the book, which ends on a cliffhanger. I’ll be looking forward to the next two books with great excitement. I highly recommend this, and the whole Pendergast series, to lovers of thrillers and mysteries, but also to anyone looking to experiment in a new genre. I don’t typically read a lot of thrillers, but P&C’s are just fantastic, and I’m completely addicted to them.