The Book of Life: Did It Live Up To The Rest of the Series

The end of the bestselling Dark Souls trilogy has finally come to eager fans that dying to see how the story all shakes out. The Book of Life picks right up where the last book left off with the chase for the famed Ashmole manuscript. However much like the last novel, this book suffers from the same fairly significant tonal shift that affected the previous one.

It is important to note that these tonal shifts were not necessarily a bad thing, they were just distinctly different from the books before it. For instance, in the second novel when the reader was looking for more of the same excitement and characters from the first novel. The two main characters time traveled and spent the entire novel in Victorian England. While this was a great novel and further blend the series interesting mix of actual history and the supernatural it left the second book feeling a bit like a five hundred and ninety-two-page interlude. Also in this book the main character Diane’s powers undergo a further “clarification” which just ends with them seeming like a totally different set of powers.

Alone all of these books stand up well, but when placed together as a series it is clear to see that this was the author, Deborah Harkness’, first time doing this. That being said, the last book was just as thrilling and engaging as the rest in series while also providing the readers with enough closure so they felt satisfied. Also, it left just enough of the back door open in case Harkness ever wanted to return to the series.  Solid writing and answers to big questions are abound in this final novel that is open enough to first time readers of the series, but long time readers will just have to live with the fact that this is just a series of books that does not feel like a series.  

The Peripheral: A Side Note or the Next Big Thing

Science fiction author William Gibson has long since established himself as one of the greatest living voices in his genre, having received numerous awards and accolades for several of his novels. His newest novel, The Peripheral, though has yet to be determined as either his next great success or proof his waning vision.

   For a science fiction writer, their lasting merit is often determined by what they get right about the future. In his most famous novel Neuromancer, Gibson has been hailed for the startlingly accurate portrait of the future he painted back in the 80s. Yet, the version of the far future that Gibson spends the most time with is already stated in the novel as not going to happen.

The basic setup of the novel is that thanks to the some computer anomaly invented by person unknown, a select few people can communicate with the past, however since the moment the future people started changing the past the two timelines broke off, so there is no chance of any butterfly effects, changing their presence. So essentially it becomes like a game for enthusiasts so see who can control the world first. It is more personal than it sounds, but when determining whether to buy a science fiction book, most people want to know what the actual sci-fi aspects are to it.

As a book itself, it is an interesting read, the characters are unique and engaging, and surprisingly enough they get an almost happy ending, if at the very least an optimistic one. These lighter endings are becoming increasingly rare for the genre and most novels now in general. Gibson is definitely a master of telling you a little less than you need to know. Which is a great technique because it keeps an aspect of mystery to the world he created, but it also takes away from the book a little because there are questions that just never get answer and plotlines that just peter out to nothing.

All in all, The Peripheral has a lot to say about where we are now, as a society, and where we are going, and it’s all wrapped up in an entertaining read.

The Tiger's Wife

        

       The Tiger’s Wife, written by young American author, Téa Obreht, while she was still in college has taken the literary world by storm, receiving numerous awards and ranking high on bestsellers lists for several weeks. Yet while the critics might rave, just how good does the average person find this book? 
        Like many great novels, the books starts off with a death, in this case, the death of the narrator’s cherished grandfather. Also like most other novels the circumstance of his death leaves a bit of a mystery for the main character to work on that will in the bring some greater understanding of the deceased. Readers have seen this a hundred times the difference here is that, the main character, Natalia, is on a goodwill mission to inoculate orphans in a neighboring country, so there are few ways for very to solve her mystery, except for looking back at the stories her grandfather growing up. 
       These stories retold to the reader through Natalia, are really the heart of the novel, they focus on a “deathless man” that Natalia’s grandfather meets several times throughout his life and a story about a girl and a tiger. When fully told they are revealed much about doctor’s and their relation to death, the physician being the shared profession of Natalia and her grandfather. 
       However, there are some gripes I have with this novel, first being that Natalia's initial lack of emotion over the death of her grandfather. There are numerous reasons for why this is, but for a book that makes a point of displaying the loving relationship between this grandfather and granddaughter, the reader is left with a feeling of lacking at least within the first part of the novel. 
        Speaking of the first part of the novel, it is a fairly tough book to get into, there is a fair bit of illusion and outright exposition about the Baltic Wars, but since few concrete details are given so those parts can be confusing. Yet once the deathless man stories start appearing the book really picks up and becomes a more dynamic read, that really makes the reader think about death in ways not usually considered.

What is The Casual Vacancy Missing?

It is only natural that the first book that J.K. Rowling writes after her insanely popular Harry Potter series, would become a bestseller even before it was release. This is such the case with The Casual Vacancy, yet does that mean that it is actually any good?

The answer is a resounding kinda. While the writing is still of the quality that one expects from Rowling, she might have done her job a little too well while describing the life of a quiet English town. The novel revolves around the lives of several members of the quaint village of Pagford as they all deal with the various and far-reaching ways that the are affected by the sudden death of Parish Councillor, Barry Fairbrother. It does not have the immediate whiz-bang of a world of wizards, and sometimes, certainly within the first fifty pages, that is a type of excitement is sorely missed.

The problem being that when you set out to a novel about a small town where you would expect nothing much to happen, it is easily for nothing much to happen and bore your readers. Now of course no writer of the modern age, and certainly one of Rowling’s calibur is going to stay at only the point of what you expected and not unveil what is truly going on in the supposedly small lives of those that live in this small town. 

Later into the book as the lives of the characters intersect in interesting way and secrets are unveiled the book takes a nice shape and the reader is not disappointed. If it only were not for those blandness of those first fifty pages that the reader has to fight their way through this would be a much more celebrated book.