Review of The Memory Thief by Jodi Lynn Anderson

The Memory Thief is the beginning of a series of books called Thirteen Witches by Jodi Lynn Anderson. In it, twelve-year-old Rosie Oakes has lived her whole life wondering why her mother feels nothing for her. The spark that causes a mother to dote on her child is just missing from Rosie's mom, and no matter how desperately she longs for her mother to show just the slightest affection to her, Rosie has learned that she's on her own. And so she turns to writing stories to bring her comfort. 

But even her stories have their limits, and on the night she decides to discard her stories, she discovers that the world she sees is just a veil over a reality that most people don't see. A world where ghosts roam freely. And a world where thirteen witches are the cause of all the world's problems. Rosie discovers that her mother owns a book about hunting witches and that her mother has been cursed by the Memory Thief, a witch who feeds off the memories of her prey. Soon, Rosie, along with her best friend Germ must find a way to stop the Memory Thief, who now has her sights on Rosie.

The Memory Thief was a book I decided to read with my pre-teen daughter because it looked interesting, and I wanted it to be something we could share. I've always loved the Harry Potter series, and this story seemed to be in that vein. While it is a middle-grade book, I thought it was a very powerful story. Rosie is a compelling character, forced to become strong in the face of a world that doesn't seem to care about her. And I thought the way the author showed Rosie and her friend Germ's relationship evolve as Germ was changing but Rosie was staying the same. It seemed like Anderson captured the kinds of feelings a young girl would go through in that situation. 

And you can't help but feel Rosie's pain throughout as she longs for a mother who just seems physically there but mentally and emotionally absent. And yet Rosie loves her deeply. It reminded me of Luke Skywalker's love for his father, who had become Darth Vader, in the Star Wars saga. It's a relentless love that is desperate to find redemption for a parent.

Rosie goes on a journey that requires the utmost bravery, but when she discovers that there's a reason for her mother's apathy, she's more than motivated.

The Memory Thief was a fun and emotionally resonant story that sets up well what is sure to be a powerful series.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Review of The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Traditional storytelling advice challenges writers to focus on one character and take that character on a journey of ever-increasing obstacles that leads the character to a critical internal change and a climactic moment in which the character uses this newfound realization to overcome the story's primary conflict. It would seem that the more characters a writer adds to the story, the more complicated the story becomes because it's no longer one character's story.

The challenge of telling multiple stories in one novel is that all the stories need to have equal weight on a reader's interest level. For example, and I may be in the minority here, when I began reading George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, which switches point-of-view characters multiple times throughout the novel, I found myself more interested in one character's story over the others, and I ended up stopping after 150 pages because the multiple storylines didn't equally draw my interest. I've read plot-driven stories my entire life, so a story with multiple storylines across multiple timelines shouldn't work, if traditional storytelling wisdom is correct.

But then there's The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, the writer of the groundbreaking post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven. The Glass Hotel could never be an example of the traditional plot-driven story, but it works so well, and it is the perfect example that there are multiple ways to tell an intriguing story.

It's actually a little difficult to pin down exactly what The Glass Hotel is about because it defies the typical synopsis you read on the inside cover of a new hardcover novel, and the actual synopsis of the novel itself doesn't quite do it justice. But like Station Eleven before it, The Glass Hotel is driven by multiple compelling characters and the unlikely connections they all share. There's no real main character because all of the characters are explored in detail, and unlike A Game of Thrones, when I moved on to a different point-of-view character, though I did want to get back to the POV character I'd just finished reading about, I was so caught up in the next POV character's story that I didn't want to skip ahead to get back to the story I found most interesting.

If there was a main character, it would be Vincent, a woman whose life is explored over the course of many years. We see her get wrapped up in a life of wealth and prestige as the wife of a man named Jonathan Alkaitis, whose orchestration of a massive Ponzi scheme provides the event that anchors the entire story. And we see the aftermath of Vincent's life after Alkaitis is arrested and imprisoned. All the way to the story's core mystery, which is, what happened to Vincent when she disappeared from a large shipping freighter out on the ocean?

What I love about Emily St. John Mandel's brand of storytelling is that she focuses on a character, but from multiple characters' perspectives, while also fleshing out those characters as well. Vincent may very well be the main character of the story, but so are all the other characters Mandel fleshes out in exploration of Vincent's life. The structure of the novel is very similar to the structure she used in Station Eleven by exploring the life of actor Arthur Leander from multiple character perspectives and timelines.

Speaking of timelines, Mandel is a master of the non-linear plot. The story jumps forward and backward multiple times, but not in a jarring way. It's all very compelling, and the way she presents the events of the story help to shape the reader perspective in a way that there are some very satisfying payoffs when she shifts to earlier or later times in character's life in the story.

Mandel has referred to The Glass Hotel as a ghost story, but not the traditional ghost story most readers are familiar with. There are, as I heard her say in an interview, multiple ways for a person to be haunted, and this story explores those ways beautifully.

The Glass Hotel was the kind of story I didn't want to end because Mandel's prose and voice are so addictive. I only wish I could craft the kind of story that would impact a reader the way Mandel's last two novels have impacted me.

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

A Review of Anyone by Charles Soule

She was searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s. What she discovered, however, was a new technology with the potential to change the world and everyone’s place within it. Gabrielle White is a scientist and the mother of an 11-month-old little girl she and her husband lovingly refer to as “the Kat” when she accidentally thrusts her consciousness into her husband’s body, becoming him and yet still herself. She calls her discovery “the flash,” and with it, she’ll be able to provide her daughter a future she once could only dream of, as long as she controls how her new technology is introduced into the world.

Flash-forward twenty years, and the world has been revolutionized. Gone are the days of paying hundreds of dollars to travel across the world in an airplane. Instead, traveling to anyplace in the world is as easy as sending your consciousness into the host body of someone already there. With the flash, you can experience things people never dreamed possible, and the opportunities are endless. This is the promise of Anyone, the large company behind flash technology. “Be anyone with anyone” is their motto.

But a world with the flash isn’t the world the flash’s creator envisioned, and a desperate woman named Annami finds herself in a dangerous fight for her life in the seedy underbelly of a world driven by flash technology, an illegal operation known as the Dark Share. Annami doesn’t know what the people do who flash into her body when she Dark Shares, but she knows she needs the money it provides. And she needs a lot of it because Annami knows something about Anyone that no one else knows, something that will once again change everything, and she’ll risk anything to expose it.

Anyone, the second novel by lawyer-turned-writer Charles Soule, grabbed my attention on the very first page and didn’t let go until the surprising conclusion on the last page. It’s the kind of story that keeps you up at night for just a few minutes longer when you should be going to sleep because you have to go to work early the next morning, which makes it the best kind of novel.

I discovered Charles Soule when he began writing the Star Wars: Darth Vader comic book for Marvel Comics. I’ve loved Star Wars since I was a child, and I had high hopes for the story of Anakin Skywalker’s early experiences as the Dark Lord of the Sith, and Soule’s treatment of Vader was truly groundbreaking. After that, I read some of Soule’s other Star Wars comics before reading his first novel Oracle Year.

Oracle Year was fantastic, but the premise of Anyone didn’t actually appeal to me at first. However, I’ve come to enjoy Soule’s style of writing, so I decided to try it out. I wasn’t expecting to be caught up in not just one, but two stories that are both gut-wrenchingly tragic and intricately plotted.

I’ve been a fan of non-linear stories ever since LOST, and Anyone’s non-linear plot reminded me a lot of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which is one of my favorite novels of all time. The story shifts between Gabrielle White’s discovery and fight to develop the flash technology and Annami’s tragic story in a world revolutionized by two decades of the flash. Non-linear stories that focus on two different characters run the risk of losing reader interest after shifting to a different story. Shifts in point-of-view are why I was never able to get beyond a hundred pages or so of A Game of Thrones. I just found some character’s scenes nowhere near as interesting as others, so I’d struggle to read through one character’s story when I was desperate to get back to a story I enjoyed more.

Anyone wasn’t like that. Whenever the story would shift from Annami’s story back to Gabrielle’s story, I was ready to get back to Annami’s story, but I was also caught up in the progression of Gabrielle’s story, and vice versa. And Soule did a masterful job of weaving the two stories together, dropping subtle hints of how the two stories are connected throughout.

I won’t give away the end of the story, but my hope is that it’s not over and that Soule has an idea for a sequel. I’m often struck by a sense of bittersweet when I finish a novel I love because I hate that it’s over. I’ve spent so much time with these characters that they don’t feel like imagined people on a page, and the end of a novel means that time spent is over. Finishing Anyone was like that, which is why I can’t wait to read whatever Soule puts out next.

Review of A Dying Machine by Mark Tremonti & John Shirley

I've been a fan of Mark Tremonti since his early days as the guitar player for Creed, one of the most popular rock bands of the early twenty-first century before the band split due to personal struggles of lead singer, Scott Stapp. I continued to be a fan of Tremonti when he formed Alter Bridge with former Creed members (sans Stapp). When I heard that Tremonti was writing a novel, a couple thoughts went through my mind. First, this might be cool. He is my favorite guitar player and has written several songs that I enjoy listening to again and again. My second thought focused more on the lens through which I've seen Tremonti for the past two decades, which is not as a novelist. It's easy to get caught up in a personality. I'm reminded of when Michael Jordan decided to play baseball. Of course, Jordan fans wanted to see him play, but Jordan wasn't a baseball player; he was a basketball player.

Still, I wanted to at least check out A Dying Machine to see if it turned out to be better than I imagined. I was pleasantly surprised when only after a few pages in, I couldn't put it down. The story deals with artificially designed and programmed humans, which serve to meet the needs of their owners. The main character, Brennan, is a ball of emotion in the wake of losing his wife, and he wins a lottery that allows him to purchase one of these artificial humans, called vessels. Hoping to fill the hole in his life, Brennan brings Stella, his vessel, home, and all seems well at first. Until Stella begins to think for herself. Which isn't part of her design. She loves Brennan, but begins to doubt his allegiance to her, with violent consequences.

The rest of the story explores what happens when a cyborg's humanity refuses to stay buried. What I enjoyed about the story is that I wasn't sure who to root for and who to feel bad for. The novel wrestles with big questions in a way that doesn't ignore them. Tremonti and Shirley have produced an interesting and thought-provoking story that proves Tremonti's chops as a storyteller just as much as an expert guitar player. I hope he continues to write more novels in the future because I'll be sure to read them.

Note: This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Review of The Burning World by Isaac Marion

A few years ago, when I first heard the premise of Isaac Marion's novel Warm Bodies--a zombie boy falls in love with a living girl--I was at least stopped by the idea enough to see that a lot of people were talking about how good this novel was. So I read it and loved it. In addition to being a unique take on the zombie apocalypse, I was even more impressed to learn that it was a bit of an unusual retelling of Shakespeare's tragic play, Romeo and Juliet. Through Warm Bodies, the reader gets to take a journey through the mind of a not-so-mindless zombie as he struggles with a past he doesn't remember and a strange desire to protect a girl named Julie that he should want to devour. Warm Bodies ended with R, the zombie protagonist who can't remember what his name was before the apocalypse, rediscovering his humanity and finding life again. Then the story ends.

Except it was only a beginning. R and Julie showed that being a zombie could be reversed. The Dead could become the Living again.

But in The Burning World, Isaac Marion's follow-up to Warm Bodies, is a much more dangerous place than we realize, and not just because of zombies. If the previous novel ended on a note of hope that things could get better in the world, this new novel demonstrates that things won't get better without a significant fight.

As the book opens on R and Julie trying to create a life together, R is trying to remember how to be a human. Though he's headed in the right direction, he hasn't quite made it yet, and he still has much to learn. The memory of who he once was is still a mystery, but it's one he doesn't care to unravel anyway because he only wants to focus on the future with Julie. Their chance at happiness is soon interrupted when a militia group called Axiom comes to take over their home in Citi Stadium. Axiom's idea of rebuilding society doesn't include the zombies that are now reforming, nor human freedom. As everything R and Julie have begun fighting for becomes threatened, the two find themselves on the run across the country with two of their friends and an unlikely ally, a man named Abram Kelvin, who wants nothing more than to disappear off the grid with his daughter, if only Axiom will let him.

Perhaps the most gripping part of this novel is the way R gradually remembers who is and how he copes with the kind of person he's discovering he was. The mystery of R's identity is reason enough to keep turning pages, but Marion also delivers fast-paced action and surprisingly deep philosophical reflection on what it means to be human.

I don't really have any criticisms of the book. I will say that I wasn't as interested in reading it as I was the first book because I didn't imagine the story could get better after Warm Bodies. I was glad to see that I was wrong.

The Warm Bodies series is a unique take on the zombie apocalypse genre that has become so popular in recent years, and so far, this one gets better with each book. I look forward to diving into the finale called The Living next.

Review of A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

I've always been a fan of really good demon possession stories, probably ever since seeing The Exorcist as a young child. There's something about the confrontation of genuine undeniable evil in these stories that gives me hope that evil can be faced and defeated.

I picked up Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts because it's about a young woman and her family, who are portrayed in a reality television show as the family struggles with the young woman's demon possession. The story is told from the present day by the possessed girl's sister Merry, now an adult, as she relates what happened in her house from her perspective when she was a little girl.

The point-of-view of young Merry as she recounts the story reminded me of my own daughter, and that added to the terror of the story. Merry is close to her sister, but she doesn't understand what is happening to her as she begins acting strangely, playing terrible tricks on her, and freaking out her parents. There's a sense of foreboding throughout the novel as you wonder what exactly happened to Merry's family. What happened to Marjorie? Was she really possessed? Was she healed? Did things get better?

This was a great story from beginning to end, and I'm interested in reading anything else Paul Tremblay has written as a result.

Reading What is the Bible? by Rob Bell

I'm reading Rob Bell's new book about the Bible, aptly titled What is the Bible? I've been a fan of Rob's ever since his Nooma video days. Of course, Rob has become famous in recent years for questioning many of the things orthodox Christians believe. The firestorm began with the release of his book Love Wins, which challenged many of the teachings the church has about hell.

I don't agree with everything that Rob says, but I do think he has a lot of important things to say and gets people thinking creatively. With that said, I'm really enjoying the book so far. Most orthodox Christians would probably shy away from the book simply because it's written by Rob Bell, but I think it's worth a read from what I've read so far. He says some enlightening things and some questionable things.

Most importantly, however, he gets people thinking about the Bible and the God it points to. I'm looking forward to writing a more detailed review of the book when I finish.