Archive for Canadian Literature
October 8, 2007 at 6:45 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
103. Blood Pact by Tanya Huff (Urban Fantasy) 281 p.
Vicki’s mother dies unexpectedly, and Vicki rushes to Kingston to arrange the funeral, only to find that her mother’s body has disappeared. Furious and vengeful, as well as relieved to have an excuse to avoid grieving, Vicki launches her own investigation into the missing corpse, dragging both Henry and Mike Celluci into the case.
I continue to be underwhelmed by Huff’s habit of switching perspectives between the heroes and the villains. I think the books would be much improved by staying in tight third person, focusing on Vicki. Actually, maybe that’s once of the reasons I like the Tony Foster books better?
Other than that, all I can say about this book is that it surprised the heck out of me. Even though I’ve read the Tony Foster trilogy, which follows the Vicki Nelson books, I really wasn’t expecting what happened. So, many thanks to Tanya Huff for somehow avoiding spoilers in the later series. I’m sort of half-looking forward to Blood Debt and the short story collection, Blood Bank, and sort of not, since they’re the absolute last in the series (although I still hope Huff will go back to Tony Foster at some point!)
Books read: 103
Pages read:30,709
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Tanya Huff, Vicki Nelson
July 26, 2007 at 5:41 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
72. Blood Lines by Tanya Huff (Urban Fantasy) 268 p.
When the curator of the Egyptology department at the Royal Ontario Museum stumbles across an incredible find, he unwittingly releases an ancient evil. Vicki, Henry, Mike Celluci, and even Tony become caught up in the mummy’s plans for world domination.
In terms of plot, I think this is probably the best of the series so far. It’s tight, the pace is relentless, and the villain’s actions have more serious consequences for the heroes than ever before. Some of the violence in it was actually a little disturbing, but Huff succeeds in creating a truly frightening antogonist for Vicki to face. Evil mummies have never been so scary.
The story was more serious, much darker and with a lot less humour than the previous novels. My only complaint is that, once again, I would have liked to see more of Tony, although that’s not really a fault in Huff’s writing—if I didn’t already know Tony from his later spinoff series, I wouldn’t miss his presence.
This was the first time I actually liked reading the villain’s POV, and in fact, in this book I think that it was necessary. There would have been too many loose ends for the reader without it.
Books read: 72/100 (72%)
Pages read: 21,458/25,000 (86%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Tanya Huff, Vicki Nelson
July 25, 2007 at 3:08 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
71. Blood Trail by Tanya Huff (Urban Fantasy) 282 p.
Henry calls Vicki in when some old friends of his, a family of sheep-farming werewolves in London, Ontario, find themselves stalked by a gunman—one who seems to know their secret. With two of their relatives already dead, they’re counting on Vicki to find the killer before any more of them are slaughtered.
I’m still less than enthused with the inclusion of the villain’s POV. It takes away most of the mystery and a lot of the suspense without, in my opinion, adding much to the story. Also, while Huff does a good job of fleshing out the protagonists, she often shows only those of the villains’ thoughts that are related to their villainy, making them seem a bit like cardboard cutouts. She is clearly capable of writing nuanced and even sympathetic antagonists, but she rarely chooses to exercise this skill. She does succeed brilliantly at showing the mundaneness and sheer pettiness of human evil.
The sheep-farming werewolves are too cute and fun for words. I was glad to see Tony in the beginning of the book, and only wish he’d been present throughout. I like Vicki and Henry a lot, but Tony will probably always be my favourite. Although Vicki’s been growing on me; I’ve heard her compared to Anita Blake, and I can see why, but Vicki is more interesting, not to mention less insanely unreasonable. Although one of the things she ate to win a contest in this book was pretty hilarious.
Books read: 71/100 (71%)
Pages read: 21,190/25,000 (85%)
Days passed: 205/365 (56%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Tanya Huff, Vicki Nelson
July 25, 2007 at 2:18 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
70. Blood Price by Tanya Huff (Urban Fantasy) 272 p.
Vicki Nelson is a private investigator and former Toronto cop who left the force when her vision began to deteriorate. Henry Fitzroy is a vampire, romance novelist, and the bastard son of Henry VIII. They eventually team up to help stop a wave of serial killings in the city—killings that look remarkably like vampire attacks.
I enjoyed this book a lot, although more for the characters and the potential for the rest of the series than for the plot. It wasn’t bad (actually, it was pretty good), but Huff didn’t handle it with the same flair as she shows in the Tony Foster books. Since this was the first book in a new series, there was also a lot of exposition that I hope decreases in the later novels. I’m also not all that fond of multiple-POV’s, especially when one of the POV’s is that of the villain. Huff handles it well, but it’s just not a narrative style that I enjoy.
That said, I did have a lot of fun reading Blood Price. I adored the Toronto setting; it was so much fun recognizing the places and institutions that she mentions. Although she doesn’t mention them by name (calling them “the tabloid” and “the other city newspaper”), her descriptions of the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star are spot-on. I love that her heroine rides the TTC. I love that Tony appears in the first book (I wasn’t sure if he was in the series from the beginning or if he was introduced later, but the former turned out to be true) and I’m looking forward to watching his character develop into the Tony from Smoke and Shadows.
I love Huff’s creation of a villain who is both hissable and mundane. Mixing the supernatural with the supremely ordinary is one of her great strengths as an author of urban fantasies, and this book—in which the villain buys the paraphernalia to work evil at Canadian Tire and his local corner store—is no exception.
Books read: 70/100 (70%)
Pages read: 20,908/25,000 (84%)
Days passed: 205/365 (56%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Tanya Huff, Vicki Nelson
July 23, 2007 at 4:48 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
69. Smoke and Ashes by Tanya Huff (Urban Fantasy) 407 p.
Following the events of Smoke and Shadows and Smoke and Mirrors, Tony Foster has now been promoted from Production Assistant to Training Assistant Director, although his boss’s stinginess and reluctance to hire a new PA mean that his actual job remains much the same. Meanwhile, one of the stuntwomen turns out to be a Demongate, and if the demons who are out to kill her succeed, the world will be at the mercy of her demon master. Tony and his coworkers are the only things standing in their way.
I loved reading this book. I smiled (or laughed) pretty much the whole way through. It gave me that effervescent feeling that all really good genre fiction does, that sense of excitement and glee, like ginger ale bubbles rising up inside. The plot is excellent, but it’s Huff’s characters and dialogue that make the book so good. And I continue to adore her for writing such Canadian novels: a hero who eats Timbits and snarks about the CBC! I’ve been waiting my whole life for this and didn’t even know it. I am so incredibly excited to read the Vicki Nelson series (of which this series is a spinoff), since they’re set in my own city.
Books read: 69/100 (69%)
Pages read: 20,636/25,000 (83%)
Days passed: 203/365 (56%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Tanya Huff, Tony Foster
July 22, 2007 at 6:40 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
68. Smoke and Mirrors by Tanya Huff (Urban Fantasy) 404 p.
In this sequel to Smoke and Shadows, Tony Foster is still Production Assistant for CB, and the crew is shooting a haunted house episode of Darkest Night—in what turns out to be a real haunted house.
I liked Smoke and Mirrors even better than Smoke and Shadows. Although, like the first book, the beginning was a tad slow, the plot sped up quickly and sucked me in. Having Tony working on a cheesy vampire detective show, with most of the crew unaware of the supernatural nature of the events happening around them would have gotten old really fast in less talented hands. Instead, Huff makes it funny:
It was like the world’s cheesiest special effect. All it needed was that Czechoslovakian women’s choir that seemed to be wailing in harmony on every soundtrack recorded in the last twenty years.
She also uses pop culture references in a way that makes them seem natural and funny, rather than annoying or overdone. This book had more depth to it than the last one, poignancy as well as humour. The ghost stuff was both horrifying and sad. Even the two bratty children grew on me enough that I stopped thinking it was a mistake to include them, and started appreciating what they did for the plot.
I found it odd that so much time passed between the first and second books, though. Not in a bad way, but there were a few things from the first book that I expected to be followed up on, but by the time the second book starts everyone’s kind of moved past them. On one hand, I kind of wanted to see the resolution, but on the other hand, it makes it more realistic that Tony’s life doesn’t sync up perfectly with supernatural events.
All in all, a fantastic follow-up to Smoke and Shadows. The third (and final) book in the series is Smoke and Ashes, which I am very much looking forward to.
Books read: 68/100 (68%)
Pages read: 20,229/25,000 (81%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Tanya Huff, Tony Foster
July 22, 2007 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, World Literature
67. China Dog and Other Stories by Judy Fong Bates (Fiction, Short Story Collection) 173 p.
World Lit Challenge: Canada
I read a recommendation for her novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café, but the hardcover copy I found at the used bookstore was a little pricey. Since I love short story collections, I decided to try this and see if I liked her writing before reading her novel. As it turns out, I like her writing very much. The collection as a whole is excellent. Judy Fong Bates uses very simple, direct prose, which I enjoyed very much. The stories are all narrated in the first person or from an intimate third person limited point of view, and the protagonists and narrators are almost all women.
All the stories are focused on the experiences of Chinese immigrants to Ontario in the mid- to late-twentieth century. The author herself came to Canada when she was a young girl, and grew up in various small towns in Ontario, which I suspect are the ones featured in the story. She is clearly writing what she knows, and doing it with immense skill. As Bates has pointed out, there was a time when every small town in Ontario had two things: a Chinese laundry and a Chinese restaurant.
The book opens with “My Sister’s Love”, which is one of the two weak stories in the collection. It started off well, but felt too short, incomplete, with a message that was too obvious and predictable. Following it is “The Gold Mountain Coat”, a funny and charming picture of two brothers through the eyes of a young girl.
The third story in the collection is “Eat Bitter”, a sad story about a young man longing to leave Canada and return to China. Although grateful to his uncle for giving him the chance to come to Gam Sun, the Gold Mountain, he is unhappy with the laundry business and the racism of small-town Ontario. And with the Canadian climate:
Back in China, he had listened in disbelief to stories about the frigid temperatures in Canada. He laughed when he heard about men losing their ears and fingers after they were frozen. He had pictured them falling cleanly off, making a clink as they hit the ground! Every time he stepped out of the laundry he was shocked by the biting winter air. Even though he felt it every day, this Canadian winter would always be a mystery to him. They would never be on familiar terms.
In “Cold Food”, my favourite of the bunch, a old woman longs for independence after many years of forced reliance on her husband, her stepson, and finally her daughter. It’s an exceptionally vivid depiction of the cultural as well as generational differences which can arise between immigrant parents and the children they raise in a new country, and gives insight into the isolation of women living in communities with only one or two other Chinese families.
“The Lucky Wedding” is the story of a young woman who elopes with her white boyfriend, and of the differences between those Chinese-Canadians born in Canada and those who immigrated from China. “The Good Luck Cafe” is the second weak story in the collection. Like the first story, it starts out strong but finishes with a rushed and slightly pointless ending. In it, the arrival of a young mail-order bride leads to strife between two brothers.
“The Ghost Wife” relates some of the fears felt by mothers, particularly that a daughter might marry a white man, and bring up her children without knowledge of Chinese language and culture, and without being able to communicate with their grandparents. The collection ends on strong note with “China Dog”, the sad story of a young wife and mother who becomes convinced that a curse of her husband’s family will have disastrous consequences for her husband.
Aside from some smooth, solidly good storytelling, I particularly enjoyed recognizing many of the details of life in Ontario scattered throughout the collection. The Canadian weather, the bus stop outside a store rather than a station in small towns, Toronto’s Chinatown, Timothy Eaton United Church, the five Christian denominations in every small town…they make up a picture I recognize, and make the things I don’t know about seem that much more real.
I can’t wait to read her novel.
Books read: 67/100 (67%)
Pages read: 19,825/25,000 (79%)
Days passed: 203/365 (56%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Judy Fong Bates, World Lit Challenge
July 16, 2007 at 1:34 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
65. Smoke and Shadows by Tanya Huff (Urban Fantasy) 375 p.
Tony Foster, a street kid rescued by the vampire Henry in Huff’s Vicki Nelson books, stars in this follow-up to the series. Having moved to Vancouver to pursue a career in the city’s film industry, he works as a production assistant for the TV series Darkest Night, about a vampire detective. When the studio’s shadows begin to take on a life of their own and the actress playing the victim-of-the-week is murdered, it’s up to Tony to figure out what’s going on.
I had a good time reading this book, although at the beginning I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I did. It started slowly, with too much exposition and some awkward narrative, but once Huff’s writing got up to speed, it became a fast-paced and enjoyable adventure.
One of the things I liked most about Huff’s Keeper’s Chronicles was their Canadian setting, and I felt the same about Smoke and Shadows. I rarely read contemporary fiction set in Canada, and even though I’m not familiar with Vancouver, it was great to read a set in my own culture. I’m eager to read the Vicki Nelson series, set in Toronto.
Smoke and Shadows was also quite funny, and Huff did a brilliant job of melding traditional high fantasy tropes with the contemporary setting, something that takes real skill to do well. She avoids making her supernatural characters, particularly Henry the vampire, too clichéd. She also, thank God, never describes anyone’s appearance unless it’s somehow significant. I’m looking forward to reading the sequels, Smoke and Mirrors and Smoke and Ashes.
Books read: 65/100 (65%)
Pages read: 19,297/25,000 (77%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Tanya Huff, Tony Foster
May 24, 2007 at 7:48 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Favourite Books, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
44. Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay (Fantasy)
I adore Guy Gavriel Kay; I really do. Ten novels so far, and the lowest rating I’ve ever given him is 4/5 (for The Summer Tree,) because the man just writes so well. I know I’ve said this before, but one of the best things about Kay is how obviously he cares about his characters, all of them, even the villains. Not only enough to make them real people with real problems and emotions, but enough not to make bad things happen to them just for the sake of advancing the plot.
Fifteen-year-old Ned Marriner is spending two months in Provence with his father, famous photographer Edward Marriner, while he works on his latest book. He’d be having a great vacation, missing two months of school and excused from his exams, except that his mother, a doctor, is working with Doctors without Borders in Darfur. In the cathedral of Aix-en-Provence he and his new American friend, Kate Wenger, meet a strange man in a leather jacket—a man who is a part of a very old story. As the past begins to bleed through to the present, Ned finds himself unwittingly drawn into that story.
I thoroughly enjoyed Ysabel. Not as much as The Lions of Al-Rassan or A Song for Arbonne, but certainly as much as The Last Light of the Sun. In fact, like the latter, it seemed somewhat simpler than Kay’s earlier work, possibly because both are told primarily from the perspective of adolescent protagonists. Which is not to say that teenagers lead less complex lives than adults in Kay’s books, but that they themselves are less likely to see the world that way. I think that it’s this telling of the story from their point of view that results in a less nuanced narrative than in Kay’s more masterful works.
Still, what’s less complex from Guy Gavriel Kay is just this side of awesome from anyone else.
Books read: 44/100
Pages read: 12, 450/25,000
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Guy Gavriel Kay
January 21, 2007 at 10:40 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Children's Literature, Non-fiction
23. The Zucchini Warriors by Gordon Korman (Children’s Fiction, Humour)
Fifth book in Gordon Korman’s Bruno and Boots series. Definitely not my favourite. Korman’s early works were his best; his later books, although still very funny, began to lose some of the magic of the early ones. I still enjoyed re-reading this, though.
Anyone looking for funny kids’ books should try some of Korman’s stuff: Go Jump in the Pool!, Beware the Fish!, I Want to Go Home, and The Twinkie Squad are all good places to start. Don’t Care High and Son of Interflux are YA Fiction, but just as funny.
24. Curse of the Narrows by Laura M. Mac Donald (Non-fiction, History)
On Thursday, December 6, 1917, at 9:05 a.m., a ship carrying a load of high explosives caught fire and exploded in Halifax Harbour. Killing 2,000 people and injuring 9,000 others, it was the largest artificial explosion in the world until the first atomic bomb test explosion in 1945. Halifax was completely devastated.
Well-written and interesting, this is closer to a novel than most works of non-fiction; the book follows the lives of many specific individuals, from the night before the explosion through the aftermath and recovery.
Curse of the Narrows provided a very clear explanation of how the collision between the ships Mont Blanc and Imo came to occur, as well as a good overview of the different types of explosives and explosions, and an outline of the specific causes of the explosion of the Mont Blanc.
The book also introduces some interesting side-issues to the main disaster, like the complications caused by the blizzard that began the day after the explosion, the politics involved in the medical response to the crisis, and the prejudice displayed towards the poor, the less respectable, the Black Haligonians, and the nearby Mi’kmaq villagers in the aftermath.
A really interesting read for anyone interested in history, particularly disasters.
Books read: 24/50
Pages read: 5,879/15,000
I’ve been inspired by Curse of the Narrows; does anyone know of any really good non-fiction about urban disasters of the last couple of centuries, like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the 1871 Chicago fire, or the 1919 Boston molasses disaster? No recent disasters, please - reading about historical catastrophes is hard enough.
X-posted here.
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Gordon Korman, Laura M. Mac Donald
Older entries »
