Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Three More or Maybe Four

Still playing catch-up...

'The Postmortal' by Drew Magary has an awesome cover and an awesome premise and is pretty good, but not awesome. I quite enjoyed the first half, but the second half kinda felt like a different novel. Not a worse novel, just a different one and I think the (perceived) change in tone and theme just never quite clicked for me. And, okay, its cover says "comedy", but it ended up, while having some quite humorous bits, being, ultimately, a tragedy. Or tragedy-lite, anyway. I think I wanted something more Christopher Moore-esque, or even Max Barry-esque and it just never delivered the humor level I wanted. Which is nothing against the book, really. I think I just read it at the wrong time with the wrong expectations.

'Cold Kiss' by Amy Garvey is a YA zombie novel. Sorta. It is about a teenager who brings her dead boyfriend back, but there's no eating of brains. The zombie bit is kinda secondary, really. It's more a book about loss and grief and moving on and first love and second love and family secrets and there's really only incidentally a dead boy in the neighbor's garage and he's really just a metaphor. In other words, it's a solid mainstream YA about teen issues, but with a lovely paranormal wrapping to trick the 'Twilight' crowd.

'Sanctus' by Simon Toyne is the new Dan Brown novel. Okay, not really. It's a little better than the standard Dan Brown offering, but it does have the "OMG Christianity is based on a big fat lie!" central theme and some ancient artifacts and ciphers and lots of globe-trotting and a mysterious religous organization. It's highly entertaining, but not really much more.

And, okay, looks like I have time for a fourth.

'Ashes' by Ilsa J. Bick is a post-apocalyptic YA zombie-esque novel. But, unlike most zombie apocalypsi (because it sounds better than "apocalypses"), this one is caused by an EMP and the "zombie-ism" doesn't appear to be contagious. It also seems to only affect teens and young adults. It's quite an interesting take on the zombie story, but sadly ends up falling into cliche toward the end. OH! And it's one of those YAs that I hate. You know? The ones that don't have an ending of their own because they're part of a series? Yeah. This one had a big ol' cliffhanger and no real resolution of any to what I thought were the primary plot points. So, that sucked. But, Bick's take on the ZA is interesting enough to me that I might be willing to read further in the series. I'm just not going to seek them out.

And, with that, it looks like I'll be all caught up by the end of the week. Yay, me!

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