Category: Book Review
The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
(Cover picture courtesy of Avon Romance.)
When the world cowered before the legions of Rome, two extraordinary men dreamed of personal glory: the military genius and wealthy rural “upstart” Marius, and Sulla, penniless and debauched but of aristocratic birth. Men of exceptional vision, courage, cunning, and ruthless ambition, separately they faced the insurmountable opposition of powerful, vindictive foes. Yet allied they could answer the treachery of rivals, lovers, enemy generals, and senatorial vipers with intricate and merciless machinations of their own—to achieve in the end a bloody and splendid foretold destiny…and win the most coveted honor the Republic could bestow.
After reading so many Young Adult books of late, reading something as heavy as The First Man in Rome was a refreshing challenge. Trust me, even if you know your Roman history well, this is a book that you should not read when you’re tired. You will forget all of the plot points.
I first fell in love with Colleen McCullough’s writing after reading The Song of Troy because her portrayals of historical characters were amazing. She made it feel that not only was I alongside these famous people, but that I truly understood them. Well, she does the exact same thing in The First Man in Rome. From Marius’ brilliant leadership in the battlefield to his dismal political career, I really feel like I know the legend as a man. We see the soft side of him when it comes to Julia, his more ruthless streak at the end of the novel and his never-ending ambition to become the First Man in Republican Rome. He’s a larger-than-life character and yet he seems extremely accessible. Contrast that to the brilliant, but debauched young patrician Sulla who develops the ruthless streak he was known for later in life. These two have an unlikely friendship, but it’s one that I absolutely love because it shows that not everything is in black and white.
If you don’t know much about Roman history, I can see where you would get confused by The First Man in Rome. Thankfully, Colleen McCullough includes a well over 200 page index that tells you everything from the English translations of Latin curses (very creative!) to the history behind many of the events characters refer to. But if you’re like me and have someone like Mike Duncan to thank for your knowledge of ancient Rome, you’ll just breeze through The First Man in Rome. In terms of historical accuracy, I can’t pick away at it. Everything is well researched and McCullough does an excellent job of defending her hypotheses in places where there are gaps in the historical record.
I wouldn’t call this a fast-paced book, but it’s not meant to be either. It’s meant to be a sprawling novel in order to draw you in to the cutthroat world of Roman politics and to explore the lives of the main players. The strange thing about Colleen McCullough’s books is that they have this sort of grand, epic feel to them that I can’t quite explain. It’s like you know they’re on par with classic novels, but there’s no sense that McCullough was trying really hard for that ‘classic novel’ status. Her books feel like epic novels in an effortless sort of way and that’s really part of the attraction of her writing: it’s larger-than-life, yet accessible to most readers. That’s why, despite the intimidating length and amount of time I need to spend on them, I’ll certainly be continuing her Masters of Rome series.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Underworld by Meg Cabot
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.
Seventeen-year-old Pierce Oliviera isn’t dead.
Not this time.
But she is being held against her will in the dim, twilit world between heaven and hell, where the spirits of the deceased wait before embarking upon their final journey.
Her captor, John Hayden, claims it’s for her own safety. Because not all the departed are dear. Some are so unhappy with where they ended up after leaving the Underworld, they’ve come back as Furies, intent on vengeance…on the one who sent them there and on the one whom he loves.
But while Pierce might be safe from the Furies in the Underworld, far worse dangers could be lurking for her there…and they might have more to do with its ruler than with his enemies.
And unless Pierce is careful, this time there’ll be no escape.
It’s not often that I don’t understand the plot of a book, especially a contemporary Young Adult novel. So I tried to figure things out with my friend and we had a conversation that went like this (SPOILERS!):
Me: So she hates John, then loves him at the end of the first book then goes back to hating him in the second book?
Friend: Yep.
Me: Then in the second book she hates him in the beginning, then loves him again, hates him again and then has sex with him and decides she loves him and wants to spend the rest of her life with him?
Friend: Sounds about right.
Me: Meanwhile, Mr. Smith told Pierce that she and John were meant for each other in the first book then discourages their relationship in the second book? And what was with nobody having a problem with Pierce coming back from being ‘kidnapped’ two days later and showing up at Coffin Fest?
Friend: *facepalm*
Between the two of us we probably read around 300 books per year. And yet no book has stumped us as much as Underworld. What the heck was Meg Cabot thinking? Her Airhead trilogy was amazing and had both strong male and female characters with a plot that took a lot of twists and turns but made sense. Her Abandon Trilogy feels sexist because Pierce can never figure anything out on her own and the characters are so inconsistent that it almost feels like a YA parody.
I hate Pierce. I really, truly loathe this idiotic main character. She’s supposed to be so kind, caring and delicate but she really just comes off as a Mary Sue who can’t do anything for herself. Pierce is so bad that I keep getting this strange feeling Meg Cabot wrote a satire piece without telling anyone. How could such a strongly feminist author create a character like this? Pierce always needs John to rescue her and she always flips between hating him and loving him. Something that always puzzled me was how she fell for John in the first place. He’s your stereotypical tortured bad boy who is supposedly ‘kind’ underneath but is really still a jerk that treats the heroine like garbage. In his case, it meant kidnapping Pierce, mentally abusing her, not telling her anything at all about himself or the Underworld and holding her against her will. Sounds pretty jerk-like to me.
I won’t even touch the fact that these two have all the chemistry and charm of a brick wall. That would provoke a rant all on its own.
I had read Underworld in hope that it would be better than Abandon because all of the backstory was out of the way. But no, it’s actually worse. Not all the backstory is out of the way and we finally learn something about John, after Meg Cabot hinting at it for 200 pages then revealing it to Pierce out of nowhere through luck (read: author intervention). There’s also the issue of all of the minor characters in the story. Their actions are meant to help drive the plot forward, but their actions don’t make any sense. Pierce shows up after being missing for two days and not only is Uncle Chris completely okay with it, everyone who sees her at Coffin Fest is too. Is nobody wondering where a seventeen-year-old girl went to for two days on a tiny island community? I live in a rural community; everyone would be so nosy that she wouldn’t get to breathe, let alone wander around before the cops were called.
Terrible, just terrible. That sums up the entire book. I don’t think I’ll be reading any Meg Cabot books for a long time now. Underworld just completely put me off my appetite for any more of her writing.
I give this book 0.5/5 stars.
A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
(Cover picture courtesy of Barnes and Noble.)
Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage, as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, victim of the sorceress who holds him in her thrall. Young Robb still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons left in the world. And as opposing forces maneuver for the final showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost limits of civilization, accompanied by a horde of mythical Others—a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords….
A Song of Ice and Fire series just gets better and better as I go along. Not only was the plot full of unexpected twists this time around, but the characters took some pretty surprising turns. Characters who were once insignificant now play much more interesting roles and betrayals are around every corner. Plenty of the betrayals blindsided me and some of the changes in characters’ personalities made sense, but were definitely unexpected.
Part of the reason why I liked A Storm of Swords so much is that George R. R. Martin did so much more world development. We got to see things from the perspective of wildlings, but also other peoples across the Narrow Sea as well as in the Free Cities. Not only that, but we got to learn more about the history of Westeros and the surrounding countries in a more natural way rather than having all of the backstory dumped on us. Martin’s world isn’t the typical fantasy world I thought it was in the first book, in part because Martin actually understands politics. It’s not a simple good versus evil fight and the characters are completely good or completely evil; there’s ambiguity all throughout the novel.
And of course, where would this series be without its awesome characters? Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa Stark, Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow all get pretty good page time like in A Clash of Kings, but characters like Jaime Lannister and Samwell Tarly also get their say. I admit that I like some characters a lot more than others and sometimes the points of view of my least favourite characters were annoying, but that’s just personal preference. Pretty much all of the points of view Martin uses are necessary to move the story along.
I don’t want to spoil anything, but when of my favourite things about George R. R. Martin is that he’s not afraid to kill off important characters. Some authors hesitate about killing off their personal favourites or even fan favourites, but not him! He actually makes his characters suffer to the point where you wonder if it’s too much. Still, it makes for an excellent novel filled with all kinds of drama set against a brilliant fantasy world. It’s a thousand pages of pure awesome, to put it bluntly. Seriously, if you haven’t read this series yet, you should start.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
How Fast do you Read?
This is sort of a post to address a question that’s come up frequently not only in the comments section and on social media, but also in my emails with authors. It seems to be a question on the tip of everyone’s tongue for me: How fast do you read? I guess it seems pretty crazy to most people that I review almost a book a day. So first off, let me start with my life story.
I was a very reluctant reader, but that’s an entirely different story. However, once I actually got reading I took to it like a fish in water. My elementary school had an excellent reading program, but they liked to keep everyone in grade one and two on the same level. The program lasted for grades one and two and they never, ever advanced any grade one past level 13 because there were 26 or 27 levels. So even if I could proficiently read aloud from a book in a level the first day I got it, I would have to read almost all 20 books in the basket for the reading assistants to even consider moving me up. (These were picture books, mind you.)
Still, I managed to reach the last level by April or May of grade two and that began my mother’s bitter fight with the school to get me some challenging books. I believe that was one of the only fights she ever lost with the school because the reading assistants would not pass me until I read every single book in that level, which carried me on to the end of the year. It was incredibly frustrating for an already frustrated and thoroughly bored eight year old.
I really started to shine in grade three, when the school librarian finally let me read whatever I wanted. That was the year I read the Harry Potter series (well, as many books as were out at the time), the first Narnia book and so many others. Since I, like many bookish people, didn’t really have many friends, books became my friends.
There’s not much to tell after that. I’ve kept on reading whenever I have the time, despite working six days a week and trying to have a social life. No, I’ve never taken any speed-reading courses or read books on speed-reading. I just read really quickly, I guess. For those of you that are wondering, I’ve broken down my average reading time below:
I average about 100-120 pages per hour, depending on the level of the book. For something as involved as Colleen McCullough’s The First Man in Rome it’s more like 90 pages per hour, but something simple as Abandon by Meg Cabot it’s more like 130 pages per hour. Middle grade novels can be as much as 200 pages per hour, but that speed is really stretching my reading comprehension skills.
The average young adult book I come across is 300-400 pages long, so at around 110 pages per hour, I can get through it in 3-4 hours. For a book like The First Man in Rome (which is about 1100 pages) that means I can read it in 11 hours, or about a week of reading if I prioritize other books I can review more quickly.
Reading is my talent, just like some people are really talented athletes or musicians. My question to you guys now is: how fast do you read? Do you know? Or how many books do you read in an average week/month/year?
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
(Cover picture courtesy of Kids Book Review.)
If you start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Though this isn’t a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.
Fences like this exist all over the world.
We hope you never have to encounter one.
I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. I mean, it’s practically a classic. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is studied in classrooms all over the world and it’s even been made into quite a popular movie. It’s supposed to be a touching take on the Holocaust through the naive eyes of a nine-year-old boy. This should be a book I loved.
Obviously it wasn’t if I’m rambling on like this. Throughout the novel, the words ‘trying too hard’ came to mind because of John Boyne’s writing style. He tries to portray an incredibly naive nine-year-old boy but ends up portraying a spoiled, unaware brat. He tries to put an ironic, tragic twist at the end, but it feels contrived. John Boyne just tried too hard instead of letting the story speak for itself. His constant interjections and observations make it seem more like he’s telling the story than truly showing it through innocent Bruno’s eyes. It makes it feel like he expects his readers are idiots who couldn’t infer some of the more subtle themes from the story itself.
I’ve read thousand page books that are less tedious than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. John Boyne repeats things over and over and over again until it feels like he’s beating you over the head with a stick. Readers are not idiots; they will not forget that Bruno’s father was visited by the ‘Fury’ over only 215 pages. They will also not forget that Bruno is a spoiled brat who matures very, very little by the end of the novel. In the end, he’s still essentially the same ridiculously naive child who seems to lack even basic understanding of the world around him. There’s also the issue of whether Bruno could have even gotten near the fence at Auschwitz without getting spotted by the numerous guards or getting zapped by the electrified fence.
In short, what was supposed to be a touching novel was not. It was patronizing and tedious, just to use two words that come to mind. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas should have been a tribute to those who lost their lives, but ended up feeling like John Boyne wanted a literary award badly.
I give this book 1/5 stars.