richardrbecker's reviews
523 reviews

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is everything you want out of a popcorn romantasy with dragons ... until it isn't. However, keep in mind that for many people, the "until it isn't" part never happens, which explains why the novel's rating is so high. 

For me, Fourth Wing was a bit of a struggle in that it felt like five stars on the front end but couldn't sustain five stars through the middle before crashing on several one-star cringe moments on the back end. At the start, I didn't even mind that it wasn't the most original story nor that the protagonist, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail, sounded like she was a 12-year-old with ADHD and in heat most of the time. Ergo, Violet is easily distracted by the male body, even while sparring, sometimes excited by the smell of her opponent. Of course, when she isn't addressing her lustful intentions at the most ridiculous moments, Violet loves to info dump, spoiling any tension before it can take off.

Still, I accepted this as her character, likening the book to a tamer young adult version (with lackluster writing) of the Red Rising series on the sci-fi front and Game of Thrones on the fantasy front, with a plotline super similar to everything like the Divergent and Hunger Game series. (In fact, if you read some of the more brutal reviews, you will find a litany of copycat moments.) But this is NO young adult series despite its cast of 20-somethings who come across like deeply immature middle-school students at a dragon rider training school without any safety nets. 

If it were a young adult novel, Yarros wouldn't have needed to dump in some elicit sex scenes near the end. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind sex as a plot point nor blush when I read authors like Updike or Salter (or any other author predisposed to inject sex into their work). But what makes Yarros different is that her scenes read like Penthouse letters of old, both explicit and crass, as they might be rewritten by, once again, a middle schooler. 

By the time I reached this point in the novel, I was utterly baffled. The book had already slipped from five to four stars, but now I was reading one-star smut that lent nothing to the story. If that wasn't bad enough, Fourth Wing does a nose dive when it finally reveals the true arch nemesis of the story — a species of humans with veiny eyes who yield magic directly from the source (rather than through a dragon or griffin). For whatever reason, this is the ultimate abomination, akin to choosing the dark side of the Force. And it is in confronting these wiley wizards and their wyverns, Fourth Wing loses all steam, becoming predictable and overwrote without any tension one would expect from an epic battle.  

By the end, I felt like Yarros threw every trope imaginable at me (and none of them done well). I was left scratching my head, wondering what the heck just happened. So, when writing the review, I decided to split the difference. The front end comes on strong as an addictive romantasy that never finds its true potential (partly because the writing just isn't that good) before descending into a mindless, numbing mess of gratuitous sex and poorly handled combat. Even the characters are confused by the end of it — which shouldn't be the case because they aren't that deep anyway. 

Is there any other reason to give it three stars? Yes, I suppose. I'm just interested enough in the story that I'll likely carry on with the series at some point when I need something entirely mindless to listen to (as audiobooks are the way to go with one moving forward). Why? I don't know. Why do we sometimes watch bad movies that we know are bad? 

And with that, in closing, I will caution some curious non-fantasy readers: Please don't let Fourth Wing be your introduction to fantasy because it might be set in a thinly developed fantasy world with dragons; it's not a fantasy in any classic sense of the genre. And I don't mean that in a good way. 

The Paranormal Ranger reads a little more like a personal memoir combined with Navajo-Cherokee culture than its promise of captivating police case studies that cut at the heart of aliens, skinwalkers, and Bigfoot encounters. 

There is nothing wrong with that, as Stanley Milford Jr. delivers a fine book. I'm glad I read it, but I did find that I wanted so much more than a fine book. Many encounters, especially those in his youth, feel a little thin (maybe even thinner than a few of my own), as do most case summations. 

As a result, I sometimes found myself more interested in the daily life of a Navajo Ranger and the Navajo culture in general than the supernatural promise that was marginally delivered, despite Milford's claims that Navajos don't wander after dark, speak the names of the dead, or want anything to do with the paranormal. He says nighttime belongs to the spirits, when witches do their work and skinwalkers prowl the land. (Never mind that you can rent a traditional Navajo hut in Monument Valley.) But I didn't always feel it in his book. 

Some of these setbacks can be linked to the book's structure, with little bits of Navajo creationism tossed in ahead of some chapters. The stories, while interesting, could have used more explanation or perhaps a clearer connection to the chapter they preceded. It might have been even better to kick them all out into a chapter of their own or save them all for something akin to an appendix. I'm not sure. I see a need to keep them, but not where they are. 

But the same could be said for the rest of the book. It wants to be great at many things and ends up not being great at any of them. It's a personal memoir, insight into the Navajo Rangers, intro to modern Navajo culture, and reflection on Navajo origin from the First World to the one we live in today. So, while some of it hints at having substance, it still feels less filling as a whole. There were times I even wished his editor would have advised that he push a little harder and dig a little deeper. 

The last two chapters are certainly the best of the book in terms of actual paranormal activity. Milford gives us something to consider, including the tidbit that the supernatural is a universal experience, not just one for the Navajo. Overall, I like his take, recognizing that the universe is far stranger than we will ever know. He harkens one of my favorite quotes from Shakespeare without ever citing it: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ 

All in all, The Paranormal Ranger is a fine memoir of a fascinating man. So, if you enjoy a brush-up with something one-off from the ordinary, it's worth picking up. Just don't expect 240+ pages of Navajo X-files. This isn't that. 

Winners by Fredrick Backman is a beautiful book, not because of the plot but for its completion in exploring community — how small and big events ripple through our lives even when we don't know it. And, it is in this macro view differs from the original novel Beartown, which was much more grounded in its plot. 

Ironically, when I started reading this book with my daughter, I missed that I had skipped over the second book in the series. But it didn't take long for me to know it didn't matter. Nor did it matter that my daughter never had the benefit of reading the first book. While I recommend starting with Beartown, suffice it to say you can pick up anywhere in the Beartown series and feel fulfilled. Backman does a beautiful job of bringing in all that has happened before in just the right amounts. 

Told over roughly two weeks (although it will feel so much longer), Backman dashes headlong into several themes tied together by an overarching premise about the trajectory of many lives, how they nearly miss each other or collide, and the aftermath of those collisions and near misses. In the process, Backman convinces you to think about your own life and all those consequences, great and small, once a chain of cause and effect is set in motion. 

At its heart, some will have you believe the entire Beartown series is about hockey and the love of a sport. While this is true in terms of attitude and atmosphere is not true in terms of what Beartown is about. Beartown and the rival community of Head may be brought together (and pushed part by hockey), but it's really about small towns and the people who attempt to shape them for better or worse. It reminded me of my small-town experiences, growing up part-time in northern Wisconsin until I was ten: How everyone knows everyone or at least thinks they do. And how different one lake community could be from the next despite looking the same to anyone on the outside. 

Northern Wisconsin wasn't a hockey town or forest community like Beartown, but one can clearly see the same patterns. In exploring these patterns, Backman does a brilliant job of exploring what it means to be human, if not part of sometimes greater than ourselves (even if that something might feel small scale by some standards). Best of all, Backman does something that I have always appreciated. He tells extraordinary stories about ordinary people much like I like to do. So if you can enjoy that, then I cannot recommend Winners and the balance of Beartown enough.

A Sport and a Pastime is a beguiling novel taken out of time. Written in 1967, many will taken aback by its voyeuristic, often misogynistic tone. But if you can get beyond it, you'll discover a treasure trove of lucid writing and characters heartbroken by feeling directionless despite having one of the most romantic backdrops for their time — sparsely populated villages in rural France.

A Sport and a Pastime is about an affair between a young American man, Philip Dean, and an eighteen-year-old French girl named Anne-Marie. It's told by an unnamed narrator in his mid-thirties, who hooks up with Philip while spending some time in Autun. What's remarkable about the narrator is he has details that are so remarkably intimate; there are times you wonder if he imagines the bulk of it. Other times, you might even wonder if he is Dean (which he is not). 

Phillip and the narrator met as many reasonably affluent Americans did in France then. On one of their outings, the narrator first spotted Anne-Marie. Despite this, it is Philip and Anne-Marie hook up, and everything we know about their relationship is told to us almost entirely through the narrator's imagination. Primarily, they drive around these small towns and engage in some highly charged erotic encounters, which would have been insanely taboo for their time. Of course, they may not do any of it, given that the narrator admits to not being reliable in his telling. 

The novel is provocative given the narrator's circumstances and perhaps his unexpressed feelings toward Anne-Marie, combined with an apparent jealousy of Phillip's ease. The narrator's admiration for Philip and yet need to undercut him as needy and undeserving drives much of the story's undercurrent conflict. Salter somehow manages all this in a novel that is surprisingly thin on plot. And while it may be a good idea to heed the advice of other reviewers and read something else by Slater first, I added the novel to my favorite's shelf for another pass. Salter is one of those writers just under the radar in an era rich with brilliant storytellers and perfect for study.

Big Time delivers an interesting and original concept—the idea that time can be quantified and harnessed through biochemical extracts—to create a solid technological thriller. The result is a dark conspiracy to harvest time from people's lives and sell it like a commodity. 

The concept is a gem, but Big Time seems to trap itself with a cast of relatively superficial characters that sometimes feel like modern cliches of themselves. It opens well enough with a young woman named Allie, apparently kidnapped and confused, being driven to a destination by a hard-hearted female contractor, one part courier, and one part assassin. This woman abducted Allie while another contractor, a strange man who is never reconciled, kidnapped Allie's daughter, Rachel.

The second protagonist is Grace Berney. She is a mid-level bureaucrat in the FDA, raising a gender-neutral daughter and caring for an aging and snarky mother who suffers from bouts of dementia. She stumbles onto the conspiracy at her dull, mindless job and risks everything to satisfy her curiosity. And as unlikely as it sounds, and it is unlikely, she and Allie have remarkably similar voices despite having nothing in common. In fact, most of the characters are relatively similar, which is remarkable given the entire cast is primarily made up of like-minded females, overshadowing even more thinly drawn men. 

And therein lies where a 3-star plot and 2-star characters weigh down a 5-star concept. Overall, it's a mundane piece of work that takes the reader from one confrontation or cliffhanger to the next, but there never really is any mind-blowing revelation. Even the ending lags in its assertion that the greedy are willing to sell anything and make a buck. But that's a lesson we don't need to learn. Of course, the greedy are willing to sell anything. That's why we call them greedy. 

Why does To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf still feel as relative as the day it was written? It's mainly because Woolf captures the essence of people, places, and things with such exacting detail — quirks, characteristics, mannerisms, beauty, social constraints, states of decay — through a perspective filtered through philosophy, psychology, and personal reflection. 

Everything about it feels so real because the writing is realistic, a glimpse inside the characters who populate the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides on the Isle of Skye (which may imitate Talland House and St Ives Bay). It is set up in three parts — The Window, Time Passes, and The Lighthouse — with each part providing a snapshot of its players before and after World War I and then again when some of the remaining Ramsays and other guests return to their summer home. 

Sometimes writers ask me how to write in stream of consciousness, weaving different perspectives together with one omniscient voice. To The Lighthouse provides a blueprint with complex characters with more depth than linear characters with singular motivations. Woolf allows her players to be as complex as any people who might know, sharing absolutes and then ideas that run contrary to those absolutes. In doing so, she allows the readers to peel back and pull away any number of impressions. 

One of mine, for example, is this idea that Part 2, Chapter 4 does a beautiful job marginalizing all our petty human dramas to what they are—dust to be swept away. In this case, time and war change everything until what feels familiar in Part 1 becomes unrecognizable in Part 2 simultaneously. It's all so terribly temporary — everything that defines the human experience. 

While not one of my favorites, the book's brilliance is not on me. If you are looking for a book that explores how people live their lives, relying on some distant lighthouse that can never be reached, acting as a metaphor to help us navigate through life's challenges and difficult times, To The Lighthouse may give you something expressly personal to you. 

When I was a kid, The Omen felt like the perfect companion to The Exorcist—two horror films that capitalize on the Christian faith (and criticized by the Catholic Church for several misinterpretations). What I didn't know at the time was David Seltzer was specifically asked to write a script in the vein of the wildly popular The Exorcist. Why would I? I was a kid. 

He devised the story after pouring over The Bible (and various interpretations), and 20th Century-Fox was thrilled to see it released on June 6, 1976. In addition to the movie starring Gregory Peck, Seltzer saw The Omen released as a short 272-page book, which was re-released as a 40th anniversary edition in 2016. I missed the release then, but I saw it pop up recently and decided to revisit Robert Thorn and his family as a book instead of the film with dramatically mixed reviews. (I missed out on reading any horror stories aside from my own in October.)

No surprise, the book follows the film with precision, making the real treat for fans of supernatural horror and/or nostalgia being greater insights into all of the supporting roles. In the book, Seltzer fleshes out the caretakers of the Thorn family home, the photographer Jennings, and Father Brennon (among others). In doing so, Seltzer breathes even more life into the story. 

Overall, The Omen is a fun read that does a solid job of creating an atmosphere of faith-fueled supernatural suspense. And while he makes Jennings even more a repulsive cretin than David Warner's take on the screen, the rest of the characters feel more real than their camera time, with Father Brennon better understood and Katherine Thorn's motivations much more apparent. The end result is a quick read that feels like the second chapter of classic horror cinema (between creature features and slasher films). 

The only real shortcomings, if it's even fair to call them out, are twofold. First, the book (like the film) is pure entertainment. There isn't much more to take away from it. And second, while many of the scenes in the book play out better than the film, nothing beats the baboon scene in the movie. According to Director Richard Donner, actress Lee Remick was terrified. I don't doubt it.

Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius offers practical guidance for navigating life's complexities in Meditations, and it's surprising how many of his thoughts (and those of his teachers and colleagues) have entered modern culture. There is no question in mind, for example, that Shakespeare read Aurelius and other stoics. 

Life lessons like living in the present, minding one's attitude, less is more, and living each day like it is your last are common themes explored by both. Others do this, too, to be sure. I had adopted them to my life as well, long before being exposed to either, likely because we've accepted them as part of our culture. Or, perhaps, they are accessible human truths. 

"If the things do not come to thee, the pursuits and avoidances of which disturb thee, still in a manner thou goest to them. Let then thy judgement about them be at rest, and they will remain quiet, and thou wilt not be seen either pursuing or avoiding." Say nothing more to thyself than what the first appearances report, Suppose that it has been reported to thee that a certain person speaks ill of thee.
This has been reported; but that thou hast been injured, that has not been reported.

How often have I tried to teach my children this as I do not want them to be slaves to what others might have done. It's read like common sense, except translated from the text of a Roman emperor who lived between 121-180 AD. What I love most about knowing this is how it demonstrates that thoughts and ideas can transcend time and space. 

"Say nothing more to thyself than what the first appearances report, Suppose that it has been reported to thee that a certain person speaks ill of thee. This has been reported, but that thou hast been injured, that has not been reported." 

I almost gave the book four stars because not every passage is as accessible as those examples, and the organization isn't there. Meditations are literally like reading journal entries. But eventually, I decided this is not a one-time read and, therefore, deserves more than four. Readers should know this going into Meditations. While reading it is fine, studying it produces infinitely more ideas and takeaways. And at some point, I intend to do exactly that. 

As an epic, Tigana has plenty going for it. And there is plenty not going for it. 

The concept that a country could cease to exist, erased of having any history and ripped from the memories of nearly everyone in the known world, seems like it would make for a very promising fantasy. And it might have, if only the story of Tigana, the land so erased, didn't so overtly overshadow every individual actor in the book. Even the exiled Alessan, who hopes to regain the throne, seems like a supporting player. And therein lies why I didn't love Tigana. 

The setting steals the show — the history, religions, folklore, local customs, and magical rites — and sweeps over the characters we should care about. But I never really did, especially because they never lived up to my expectations of being the rebels I thought they might be, even as they tempt their enemies into killing each other. Only Devin comes close to becoming a worthy protagonist as a singer identified as a potential hero. (Although I do appreciate Brandin's depth as a tyrant with a heart of sorts.)

Despite being a master world builder and a wonderful writer, Guy Gavriel Kay focuses too much on the macro world to care about the micro world of individuals and their frailties. The formality of the telling, and he often prefers telling over showing, is elegant but also melodramatic, especially the dialogue. If it were a play, one might say it is over-reheased. If it were a movie, overwritten. 

Still, I suppose it works well enough for what it is meant to be. It's a story about people and their memories in the aftermath of a political conflict, as well as a new one when a few people resurrect a forgotten past. But not so fast, exactly. The Tigana victims are not as pure as one might assume, propped up by suddenly remembered stories of old, saying nothing of their shortcomings. It is subtext, I think, that convinces so many people to fall in love with Kay's world. 

So, while it won't be joining the majority who praise the work, it does deliver on its promise. And if you are looking for that promise — an epic fantasy with a fully realized world — you will likely love it.

Writer by Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat captures the complexities, complications, and confusion in the wake of British colonialism. Set on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat villagers whose lives are transformed during the Mau Mau Revolt, one of the bloodiest post-war conflicts of the British army. 

Although the uprising would be defeated, many Kenyans still regard this revolt as a significant step toward independence. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o captures the confusion caused by a desire to retain the benefits of colonial life without those who introduced it. In doing so, Thiong'o is fair in occasionally capturing the more noble aspects of British colonialism. 

However, these more noble aspects often descend into oppressive Colonial rules, which dehumanize tribes and grab prized real estate. The tensions created by these rules reinforced resentment for even the kindest of settlers. Likewise, in the village where the story takes place, alliances are forced, friendships are betrayed, and even love is tested. 

Mugo is the principal protagonist. He is at the heart of the story, which is one of mistaken heroism and a search for the betrayer of a Mau Mau leader. The story attempts to reconcile concepts such as loyalty to a movement, love of country, individual prosperity, and Marxism. 

It is a well-written and insightful novel, especially for anyone wanting to understand the cost of progress and the consequences of colonialism. Thiong'o may know. He lived it, and then, he lived an even more tortured period after Kenya achieved independence as his political views ran contrary to his country's views, eventually leading to his imprisonment and later exile.