Tag Archives: historical

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (2011) – BR00169 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
November 13 2019

Plot or Premise

A witch who has ignored her powers feels them re-awaken in Oxford as she does research on alchemy and encounters a vampire interested in the same book.

What I Liked

The story is far removed from the world of young magicians or young love. Instead, we see a budding partnership, collaboration and even romance blossom between Dr. Diana Bishop, hidden witch, and Matthew de Clermont, vampire. But it is the richness of every place and event that overwhelms the senses…Oxford comes alive, his castle in France is a presence all on its own, the changing relationship between Diana the witch and Ysabeau the mother-in-law vampire, and even the life in America with Diana’s aunts. Each segment is visual, sensual, tangible to the reader. Yet at the same time, it combines all the magical elements with DNA tests and the use of science.

What I Didn’t Like

The sheer magnitude of the story is hard to keep straight with all the characters and the various histories that intertwine. There is also not enough info about demons, while an abundance for vampires and witches. And the ending is basically “to be continued”.

The Bottom Line

A fantastic start to a fantasy series.

The Enemy by Lee Child (2004) – BR00163 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
November 3 2019

Plot or Premise

Jack Reacher is still in the military and gets transferred out of Panama just before New Year’s Eve, 1989. The Berlin Wall is falling, Panama is heating up with Noriega, and Reacher is watching grass grow at his new post, until a General drops dead at a seedy motel.

What I Liked

The story gives more of Reacher’s back story, and it is interesting to see the “man alone” working within a command structure with others. And it is an interesting premise — what do you do in the military when the future looks like you’re about to become obsolete? The supporting characters were good, and it was nice to see Reacher with his brother and mother. At the end, there is a twist about an error Reacher makes early on that comes back to bite him, and it is a great element to keep. The aftermath is kind of abrupt, with who went where and what happened next, but hard to avoid in a “flashback” style story.

What I Didn’t Like

The premise for the story is a little far-fetched, but when they get to the final reveal, the real specific motive is ridiculous as the people involved would never have done what they did, at least not on paper, and not openly. Reacher stumbles around in the dark long past where certain lines of enquiry should have been obvious, particularly for the identity of a specific witness. And the killer.

The Bottom Line

Nice backstory, weak mystery.

Bear by Marian Engel (1976) – BR00162 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
July 11 2019

Plot or Premise

A historical librarian gets a chance to catalogue the books at a remote island home for a summer in Northern Ontario and encounters locals, free time to figure out her life, and a pet bear.

What I Liked

This book was given to me back in my teens, a gift of quality literature as it had just won the Governor General’s Award for fiction. I knew nothing about it as I started to read it. And I was relatively shocked to see “high literature” include bestiality and graphic descriptions of oral sex performed by the bear on the main character. The historical parts were awesome, as was the descriptions of the island and the passage of the summer.

What I Didn’t Like

I found the romanticization of the relationship with the bear a bit odd, as was the depersonalization of her other sexual partners during the summer. I also felt there were gaps in the ending — we saw what she intended to do, not what she actually did once she was back in Toronto.

The Bottom Line

Bestiality is a strange theme for an award-winner.

The Lolly-Madonna War by Sue Grafton (1969) – BR00160 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
May 22 2019

Plot or Premise

I loved Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series, and since I’m a bit of a “completist”, once I like an author’s books, I try to read everything by them. Although it was made into a movie, this book has been long out of print. Which made no real sense…how could a book written by an author as prolific and popular as Sue Grafton, and that was made into a movie, not be available ANYWHERE? Now that I’ve read it, I can see why. Like Keziah Dane, one of her earlier books, the characters are dirt poor backwoods families. Isolated from town, this story takes place entirely on the properties between two neighbouring families. If you have ever heard of the old Hatfields and McCoys feud of two warring families, fighting for reasons they no longer remember, you have the Lolly Madonna War.

What I Liked

The book picks up mid-war with the latest skirmish. The one family, the Gutshalls, has let slip to the other family that there is a girl coming to their house, a girl named Lolly-Madonna who will be a potential mate for one of the sons. Except it is entirely fictitious. Until the second family, the Feathers, sees a girl hiking along the road and decides it must be Lolly Madonna and therefore kidnap her to get back at the Gutshalls, depriving them of their prize. The girl protests, but to no avail. The war escalates with incursions on each other’s territory, shots fired, stills overturned, pigs slaughtered. And a budding romance with the girl.

What I Didn’t Like

The story is incredibly depressing from start to finish. With a giant plot-hole right in the middle…three of the kids are still friendly and talk occasionally, pretending to fight when they need to but not doing any real harm to each other. And when the Feathers tell their Gutshall friend that they have Lolly Madonna, he doesn’t say, “But we made it up”. It would have ended the story. Instead, he decides to say nothing, tell his parents, and they get it in their head to say nothing but maybe they should rescue her. Just as an excuse to keep the feud going…if one does something, even in retaliation, the other has to respond. And the ending is beyond depressing, not to mention you don’t really “see” the ending, you just turn the page and find out how it all ended.

The Bottom Line

There’s a reason this is out of print.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2006) – BR00152 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
April 2 2019

Plot or Premise

A young girl uses stolen books to distract herself from the reality of living in Nazi Germany in WWII while hiding a Jewish man in her basement.

What I Liked

It is incredibly difficult to know how to review this book. The second half moves along at a much quicker pace and with much higher stakes. The book is narrated by Death / Grim Reaper, and the chapter headings give glimpses of what is to come. There are some red herrings near the end, implying one ending while leading to another, but overall it is pretty solid. The characters are lively, the girl is outstanding, and there are glimpses of her family that offer rare moments of joy and love. And it moved me to tears at the end.

What I Didn’t Like

It is hard to accept the implied message that “most Germans were good / nice”, it was just the Nazis that were bad people. And even the storyline written by the Jewish man in the basement is that it is all because of the Fuhrer, that Hitler is the only truly evil one. There are parts of it that read like almost an apology for Nazism rather than a sense of accountability for the nation’s deeds. The extra materials at the end tell how the author was inspired by his grandparents’ accounts of the ordinariness (in some ways) of the war in Germany for Germans – something that happened around them, or to them, not committed by them. In terms of the writing, the first half is a bit slow and dull, and the constant foreshadowing is repetitive and annoying at the start, less so at the end. The caricature of the mother is ridiculous; she only becomes human near the end. Finally, and this is a bit of a spoiler, the story ends rather abruptly, leaving out a huge opportunity to tell some more story. I know this book is aimed at teens and is hugely popular, but I would not wants someone relying on this book as their only source of history.

The Bottom Line

Solid read, not sure about the message.