Category Archives: Challenges

Damaged Package

Book Review of Damaged Package, by S.A. McAuley

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Damaged PackageI bought an ecopy of S. A. McAuley‘s book, Damaged Packages.

Description from Goodreads:
Forced into early retirement from his career as a SWAT officer for the city of Detroit, James Deacon knew that when he failed it would be a fall of epic proportions. He’s been living life by the tips of his fingers for over twenty years, and his new gig organizing a group of misfit military types into a functioning team—including his reluctant ex-fiancée—won’t return him to stable ground anytime soon.

Trevor Barrow has been on the move for the last seven years—hitting the road when relationships became too real or too much work. He’s home now, working in the hazardous world of bike messengers in the Motor City, and the only one of his eight siblings who knows he’s returned is his sister Cat. It’s not as if reconnecting with them matters anyway, because it’s likely he’ll be gone again soon.

Both men are lugging some heavy baggage, but when they chance upon each other in a dive bar it’s hard to deny their flaws are more like symbiotic quirks. Trevor’s backpedaling instincts and Deacon’s dance-dance party past may just be intersecting at a time when things are about to get explosive in Detroit.

Review: 
Not bad, but nothing exceptional either. Deacon was incredibly sweet. There is something really emotionally resonating in seeing a man just want to make someone else happy. It pushes a lot of my happy buttons. I also liked that he was an older man. I liked that Trav wasn’t brainless. He was a smart guy. I appreciated that. The sex was pretty good too.

But the book is full of clichés. Full of them. It’s all pretty predictable, and everything after about 75% is 100% predictable. Worst of all it has the dreaded, ‘he didn’t know what but something made this man/situation/feeling/etc different.’ NO. That is NEVER enough to explain someone’s uncharacteristic feelings about someone or something. NEVER. It’s as bad as, if not worse than, insta-love. Which to be fair, this isn’t quite (pretty close though).

Plus, a lot of it just didn’t hold together very well. For example, The initial event in which Deacon was supposed to have come to Hank’s attention didn’t appear to be one in which a SWAT team would have been needed. Pretty sure the normal police could have handled that. Then, for the whole book it’s hinted that Deacon was working for Hank to investigate corporate espionage, but it felt a bit over the top that he hires ex SWAT and soldiers for this. Then suddenly at the end, we’re dealing with terrorists instead. But only for about 10 pages, it was all resolved in an instant. Then there’s the fact that Deacon’s ex just happens to work there too. Everything just barely hangs together. It does, if you don’t look too closely at it, but just barely.

Lastly, a personal irritant, as someone who worked in Child Abuse & Neglect investigations for several years: if by some manner Trav did become emancipated form his mother at 16, which it takes a lot to do, all her other children should have been removed as well. Think on it. The court is willing to declare, and thereby be accountable if something happens to him, that his mother is so unfit her 16 year old is better off caring for himself. Would they then leave several other children ranging from infant to 9 years old in her drug-addled care? I think not.

The writing, however is fine and though the plot is shaky a lot of the men relating to one another is touching in it’s own occasionally sappy way. The book is a solid, middle of he road read.

Venus and Adonis

Book Review of Venus and Adonis, by Publius

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Venus and AdonisI played a bit of a game this afternoon. I was ready to start a new book and, as I’ve given most of my month to NaNoWriMo, my review requests have gotten little attention. So, I wanted to read a request.

I gave my kindle to my seven-year-old with the instructions to pick her favorite picture from the list. (They were book covers, obviously.) She chose ‘the rose.’ Yes, that’s obviously an anemone, but you try arguing with a seven-year-old.

The author, Publius sent me a copy of Venus and Adonis in exchange for a review.

Description from Goodreads:
The myth of Venus and Adonis is one of the great erotic love stories of world literature. Venus, the goddess of love, falls in love with the handsome young human, Adonis. She plies him with all of her charms but he resists. She kisses him, pushes him onto the grass and climbs on top of him, and makes love to him.

And swift at once the grass and him she pressed.
Then sweetly smiling, with a raptured mind,
On his loved bosom she her head reclined,
And thus began; but mindful still of bliss,
Sealed the soft accents with a softer kiss.

But Adonis says he is too young and that all he is interested in is hunting. Can you imagine a modern man refusing the goddess of love? The love scenes in this myth (that Shakespeare also covered) were as explicit as anything written up to that time.

Adonis goes off to hunt. Venus warns him to stay away from dangerous wild animals like wolves and boars that won’t care about his beauty. But Adonis hunts a wild boar anyway. He spears the boar, but badly. The boar pulls the spear out. It runs the fleeing Adonis down and gores him.

Venus senses the danger and rushes to her lover. She finds Adonis dead. Venus is heartbroken. She sprinkles nectar on Adonis’s pooled blood, and magically appears the red anemone, the “wind flower,” because its petals scatter in the wind.

This Venus and Adonis is a prose poem that tells the story of Randy Maynard, a “blond Adonis” who takes a job with a big bank in San Francisco in 1978. The story follows Randy’s separation from his true love, his seduction by a large corporation and a number of women and includes erotic scenes that are up to today’s standards. As in the original, love and death commingle in fifty shades of grey. The recreation of Seventies office life with a cast of acid-etched characters is reminiscent of Mad Men and provides added levels of intrigue and entertainment.

Review:
I have had this book on my request list for ages. I’ve put off reading it, largely because I didn’t understand what it was supposed to be about. Here’s the problem, I’ve read it now and I still don’t know what it’s supposed to be about. I can tell you what happens, but that’s not the same thing. I just don’t get it. I have no idea what the point or plot of this story actually is. None.

Having now read it, I at least understand what the blurb means. But I don’t see it in the work at all. Maybe I don’t understand banking well enough. Maybe I don’t understand 70s office politics well enough. Maybe I don’t know my mythology well enough. Who knows, but the story’s correlation to the Venus and Adonis myth is pretty weak, if there at all beyond the author’s declaration. I suppose the writer can say it’s based on anything he/she likes. Who has the authority to argue?

Further, the book is presented as erotic. But there are two brief sex scenes. One in which ‘He felt his trouser snake uncoil.’ and another in which ‘With a flurry of her hands like butterflies around his swollen Maypole till his fountain spurted a pool of rich white semen on his belly.’ (That’s how it’s written, BTW. Is that a fragment? It feels like a fragment sentence.) Trouser snake? Maypole? For real? IDK, maybe the author is trying to recreate 1970 language. I hope so.

The writing itself is fine. It’s a little flat, but I got the impression the main character is just skirting this side of clinical depression, so that may be atmospheric and purposeful. I did like the characters, but they had no depth what so ever. Similarly, the limited outlining of family history and a past relationship was nowhere near enough to give this book enough meat to feel satisfying. So, basically I’m ending this book as confused as I started it. It reads well (and it’s short), so if you’re curious give it a try.

Death of a Red Heroine

Book Review of Death of a Red Heroine, by Qiu Xiaolong

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death-of-a-red-heroineI picked up a used copy of Qiu Xiaolong‘s Death of a Red Heroine at Goodwill. You really can’t beat $0.70 for a book!

After buying it, I gave it a wipe down (as I do anything I buy at Goodwill) and stuck it on the shelf to read someday. When I finally picked it up and opened it to the first page for the first time I found a surprise. It’s signed! I had a bit of a squee moment, I’ll admit it.

It's signedDescription form Goodreads:
Shanghai in 1990. An ancient city in a country that despite the massacre of Tiananmen Square is still in the tight grip of communist control. Chief Inspector Chen, a poet with a sound instinct for self-preservation, knows the city like few others. When the body of a prominent Communist Party member is found, Chen is told to keep the party authorities informed about every lead. Also, he must keep the young woman’s murder out of the papers at all costs.

When his investigation leads him to the decadent offspring of high-ranking officials, he finds himself instantly removed from the case and reassigned to another area. Chen has a choice: bend to the party’s wishes and sacrifice his morals, or continue his investigation and risk dismissal from his job and from the party. Or worse.

Review:
On finishing this book, I closed it feeling satisfied. This is generally all I ask of a book, but if I think back, I also remember that it took a good 200 pages for this book to get rolling and for me to really become interested and vested in it.

Part of this is probably do to the fact that I only have a loose understanding of the events surrounding the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent Party politics that play an important part in this book. But it also just has a slow start, which isn’t helped a lot by the rather dry tone Chinese literature always seems to have.

In the end, however, what I liked so much about the book is that it’s about good men trying, against almost impossible odds, to be good men. I don’t mean John McClane type heros, but ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances.

Chen, the main character is a coming to terms with the fact that his life has not turned out the way he hoped. He shows a consistent moral mettle that is impossible not to respect. His partner, Yu, is a man who was given very few choices in life but his dedication to both his job, doing the right thing and his wife are heart melting. It was these men and their character that carried the day for me. I’m glad to have read the book.

Though not relevant to the review, I’m also going to admit to a long standing mistake on my part. I’ve always thought the name of this book was Death of a Red Heron and that this is perhaps where the literary device took it’s name. I even continued to read the title as I expected it to be, rather than as printed, long after buying the book. So, when I opened it to the first page and finally really read it and discovered it reads Death of a Red Heroine I had a good long laugh at myself. Feel free to laugh at me too.