Book Club of the Damned. That’s what Paul Constant over at the Stranger calls it when he reads an awful book on a dare. Well, that’s New Moon for me. I need bleach now. Spoilers abound here. I just don’t care enough about your enjoyment of this book to worry about spoiling it. Plus, if you haven’t read it yet and you’ve stumbled here, then you probably are reading it on your own Book Club of the Damned quest.

Plot: At her own birthday party with the Cullens, the vegetarian vampires, Bella Swan accidentally cuts herself triggering their blood lust. Luckily everything ends up okay, but the Cullens decide to leave town rather than accidentally eat Bella. Whatever will Bella do without her beloved but vacuous Edward? Why, she’s start hanging out with the hunky Indian boy Jacob down at the rez, all the while pining for Edward. But she’s too selfish to leave him alone when he develops feelings for her, and he’s too creepy to walk away himself. Then bad vampires start hunting Bella and the Indian youth turn into werewolves (good ones, right?) and Edward in South America thinks Bella has killed herself so he heads to Italy to get the King Vampire to kill him because he is heartbroken. Bella runs to Italy to save him by letting him know that she’s alive, but then the royal vampires give the Cullens an ultimatum to kill Bella or make her a vampire. Which is what she wants anyway, and we are done with the book.

Most codependent relationship I’ve ever read. Bella is just dead inside without her Edward. Edward is the same without Bella. Bella has to have a boy around to feel okay, whether it’s Edward or Jacob. I wanted to strangle her. Edward too. Also Jacob for good measure.

Hated all the navel gazing. A fair amount of action happens. But each time it’s followed by pages of badly written thoughts from Bella about what it all means for her and Edward. 300 levels of parsing.

Edward and now Jacob are just as creepy as before. And as manipulative. Jacob gets to be the nice guy who sticks with Bella in the hope that she comes around to having a thing for him. He’ll be the shoulder to cry on until he can use it to get in her pants. Of course, that’s until Edward returns and then Jacob gets overtly manipulative and somewhat scary trying to get Bella to break it off.

Truly awful tripe.

So why did I read this for Book Club of the Damned? I am being bribed. It’s a good bribe. It involves boots. Plus, sometimes this is just cathartic. And it’s a library book so my only cost was the caffeine necessary to read it.

Title: New Moon
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Cover creator: Gail Doobinin (designer) / John Grant (photographer)
Series: Twilight Saga; 2
Imprint / publisher: Megan Tingley Books / Little Brown
Format: Hardcover
Length: 563 p.
Publication date: September 2006
ISBN-10: 0-316-16019-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-316-16019-3
Subject: Vampires — Fiction
Subject: Werewolves — Fiction
Subject: High schools — Fiction
Subject: Schools — Fiction
Subject: Washington (State) — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.M57188New 2006

I knew that the James Bond of Ian Fleming’s novels wouldn’t be the James Bond of the films, not even the thuggish Daniel Craig version from the last two installments of the franchise. The spare writing and plotting in Casino Royale are superb. But the Ian Fleming version in Casino Royale under-ceeded anything I thought it might be. I’m coining the word under-ceeded in case someone else hasn’t already done so. Bond’s characterization is beyond misogynist, and both he and Bond girl Vesper Lynd, fail to make much sense in relation to each other. I won’t be going out of my way to read any more James Bond novels.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

The setup: a Soviet agent has taken money earmarked for funding a Communist union and it’s associated anti-capitalist activities and invested in a chain of brothels, which more or less immediately went under. To make up this money, this agent Le Chiffre plans to make it all back gambling at the Casino Royale. The British would rather Le Chiffre lose the money and disgrace the union than just simply take him out. That’s Bond’s job: go to Casino Royale and out-gamble the Communist in baccarat.

The book has only three scenes of action: Bond nearly gets assassinated by a bomb, one of Le Chiffre’s henchmen puts a gun to Bond’s back during the baccarat game, and Le Chiffre and Bond have a car chase and subsequent torture session after the gambling. I was expecting a more human kind of James Bond rather than an invincible Bond. The Fleming version doesn’t actually do a lot. The bomb? Bond doesn’t do anything; he survives by luck. The henchman? Bond shoves his own chair backward so that he falls over. The car chase? Drive, catch up, hit spikes, crash. Done.

Frankly, I like this James Bond, so far as the action goes. Simple and effective plotting. I’m sure a movie version of this that was true to the book wouldn’t sell well, but I’d go. I don’t want complicated. Complicated is hard to pull off in real life.

On the other hand, the misogyny exceeded my expectations. I expected a fuck her and leave her James Bond, and early on it looked like that’s what I was going to get. Emotionally distant, using women for sex, that I can understand. Sometimes a person just needs a little sexual release.

But then Bond goes on to not liking women agents at all. They distract him. Rather than seeing that as his own failing, he puts the blame on women. See, it’s their fault his cock stands at attention when he has work to do. Women aren’t any good and should keep their concerns to which frocks they will wear. Ouch. But still not something beyond the pale in a character (in a real person it would be).

Still it got worse. After all the action, the final third of the novel is Bond having a love affair with Vesper Lynd. The book is mostly done with the spy stuff, and now what’s important is the sex. Lynd, despite being a spy herself, acts like a flighty schoolgirl with a crush. She doesn’t get to be the calm, cool, super-competent Bond girl of the movies. Now it’s all about her crushes on men. Ugh. I had hoped while I read these scenes that Vesper would turn out to be playing Bond. I wouldn’t be so lucky.

So Vesper, though supposedly a spy but lacking any spy skills, has only her body going for her. Bond, schooled in the ability to discard women like Vogue fashions, falls in love in quick order. Why? It’s not even that she really returns his attention. Miss Lynd goes cold in the first few intimate scenes and James doesn’t get what he’s looking for. Every touchy-feely scene proves difficult for the Bond girl and James knows something is wrong.

So what attracts his so-called loved? Is it some sort of possession thing? Some sort of control issue? I don’t know and I don’t know if Fleming knew his own characters enough for it to be intentional. But when I read the following I was pretty disgusted:

He found her companionship easy and unexacting. There was something enigmatic about her which was a constant stimulus. She gave little of her real personality away and he felt that however long they were together there would always be a private room inside her which he could never invade. She was thoughtful and full of consideration without being slavish and without compromising her arrogant spirit. And now he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape.

That’s the basis of his love? He’s all ready to give up being a spy for that, and when that is taken away from him that’s when he decides to be the scourge of the Soviets? Forgive me for not being interested in reading more about a man who wants to keep the world safe for the domination of women.

I don’t care if standards were different then. What I read now has to live up to my views now, or at least attempt to do so, aside from reading for the purpose of opposition research. Even by the standards of the 1950s, the segment of people who thought that rape had a sweet tang can’t have been mainstream. I’m scared to look though, because I don’t really want to know that people really were that ugly then.

Title: Casino Royale
Author: Ian Fleming
Cover creator: Roseanne Serra and Richie Fahey (designers) / Richey Fahey (artist)
Series: James Bond; 1
Imprint / publisher: Penguin
Format: Paperback
Length: 181 p.
Publication date: 2002 (originally 1953)
ISBN-13: 978-0-14-200202-5
Subject: Bond, James (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: British — France — Fiction
Subject: France — Fiction
LC classification: PR6056.

Before this review devolves into my musings on the meaning of it all, the most important thing to say about The Taqwacores is that Michael Muhammad Knight has filled the book with a group of young engaging characters. They don’t do much, and nothing much happens, but I liked the characters so much I didn’t care. A house full of young American muslims struggles to reconcile their religion with their personal values. Mostly not very devout, the youth are into the punk scene. One of them regales his housemates with tales of taqwacore bands from his days on the west coast as he tries to set up a giant punk show played by the legendary taqwacores. The punk ethos collides with islamic tradition and theology.

The narrator is Yusef Ali. He’s from Syracuse, attending college in Buffalo where his parents think living with muslims will innoculate him from the sins of the non-muslim school body. Yusef is a follower. The house is filled with ne’er-do-well ringleaders, Jehangir Tabari chief among them. He’s the former west coaster. Mohawk. Alcohol. Marijuana. Girls. Punk. Jehangir rejects most of muslim culture but proudly claims it’s mantle. He believes that the United States will be the center of a new islam. Punk is a new mystic sufist islamic tradition to him. The important part of islam is belief in allah along with occasional ritual prayer, conducted very much not in accordance with older tradition that is.

Other members of the household: The most devout of the group is Umar, who continually blows up over the rest of the household not following religious rules. Rabeya is the only woman living there. She wears a burqa 100% of the time so the house has never seen her face. Rabeya will lead prayers, or cross out portions of her q’uran with which she doesn’t agree. Her reasons for wearing the burqa remain unsaid the whole book, but it certainly not because she feels it denotes a woman’s lesser status. Fasiq Abasa mainly exists to smoke marijuana on the roof, where he’s joined by Amazing Ayyub and Rude Dawud. Fasiq and Ayyub are couch surfers, and Umar kicks Ayyub out of the house for a time after he catches the amazing one having sex in his bed.

The second strong points of the book is it’s depiction of the culture clash. I can’t speak to the authenticity of either culture, as I’m neither punk nor muslim. Perhaps it’s all made up, but it’s imagined superbly. Islam is submission. Punk is quite the opposite, rebellion. Most of the house tenants don’t struggle with claiming both mantles, but they run into practical problems all the time. Rabeya leads prayer, which is normally forbidden. The direction of Mecca is marked by a hole in the wall created with a baseball bat. While they continually question what it takes to be muslim, they also occasionally challenge their own punk status means anything, once noting that a wallet chain could suffice to be punk.

I think it’s a little ludicrous to ignore or reject 99% of the precepts of a religion yet still identify oneself as an adherent. But such cognitive dissonance is certainly not limited to muslims. Christians have been following that outline for centuries. Some catholics do little more than attend mass on christmas and easter. Even while rejecting the tenets and social structure, the near apostates still derive some measure of comfort from their membership. In the book, being muslim is part of who they are even if it means little.

For those who are squeamish, The Taqwacores is full of muslims behaving badly. If sex, drugs, or poor treatment of q’urans will offend you, stay away from the book. One of the closing scenes contains a sex scene that I would classify as must read, but it’s crude and dirty and not for the faint of heart.

Other blogged reviews:

• Under the Midnight Sun
• The Word Hoarder
• Brilliant Disguises
• Lazygal Reads
• Bonbonloverr
• Tazzy Star

Title: The Taqwacores
Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Cover creator: Goodloe Byron
Imprint / publisher: Soft Skull / Counterpoint
Format: Paperback
Length: 254 p.
Publication date: January 2009
ISBN-10: 1-59376-229-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-59376-229-2

Heather bribed me to read Twilight. I lived in Boise, Idaho for about a year. One of the few things I miss about the city is pizza from Flying Pie, particularly gourmet night when they try out pizzas not on their main menu. A pizza smorgasbord. Because people remember their pizza so fondly, the pizzeria offers a pre-made pizza option. They’ll put together one of their pizzas, then pack it in dry ice for you to deliver to your favorite people in other cities. Heather offered up one of their pizzas if I would subject myself to the dazzling angst that is Twilight. Twilight seemed like a small price to pay for a Flying Pie pizza, so I agreed.

Isabella Bella Swan moves to tiny Forks, Washington to live with her father. She soon becomes convinced the dazzling, gorgeous, aloof, smart, talented, athletic boy Edward Cullen is both a vampire and in love with pathetic, lonely, whiny, introverted, fickle, clumsy, over-analytic yet advanced placement new girl in town, herself! Turns she’s right, and chaste adventures ensue.

Surprisingly, I didn’t hate this book. It’s not good, particularly the first half of the book where the characters annoyed me so much I twittered every idiotic move, much to the annoyance of my followers. Bella thinks about two things: how much she hates Forks (go home!) and how much she likes Edward Cullen. Boys boys boys! The book only passes the Bechdel test because Bella discusses her class schedule with the school secretary. She has four local boys chasing after her, and yet she goes for the creepy distant guy who at that point had no redeeming features except for his good looks and designer clothes. Which is fairly normal I’m sure. Just annoying. Worse though is that she likes to claim she’s unattractive. She’s just a little too self-involved to care about. I started rooting for the vampires to cut her up and eat her in the grisliest fashion possible.

After Edward reveals himself, the story picks up and became more bearable. Either that or I became inured to Bella’s whining. Sure, there’s still too much self-flagellating discussion between the two young almost-lovers. He repeats a hundred times that he’s too dangerous to be around her, yet is too selfish to walk away. She breathily pleads for him to never leave her. What sees in her I do not know. Meyer’s narrative says Edward is exceptionally attracted to her scent. Although we boys appreciate a girl who smells nice, T&A is what really attracts us at age 17. But I can indulge Meyer her wish fulfillment scenario where boys are interested in more lofty pursuits.

As I noted, the story picks up. Edward saves Bella with his Superman speed and strength, preventing an out of control van from crushing her tender mortal body. Later he arrives just in time to save Bella from the clutches of dastardly would-be rapists in fair Port Angeles, center of the Northwest’s urban crime zone. Bella even gets to watch a super-fast vampire family baseball game before the evil vampire’s show up and all hell breaks loose. While the alpha-vampire-male playground fight is so derivative the Treasury has to bail it out (yes, I just made a stimulus joke), it’s still fun to watch. Well, except for the fact that Bella passes out when the ultimate confrontation takes place so I didn’t get to see what happens in this exclusively first-person narrative! Bella passes out! Next scene, let’s talk to the winners! Which vampire, the good one or the evil one, gets to claim Bella for books two through however many Meyer will write?

What came to mind multiple times while reading this is Ender’s Game. Yup. The Orson Scott Card (another nebbish Mormon writer) written science fiction classic. That one was all about introverted geek boys realizing their alpha-male fantasies of secret skills that could be revealed if given the right opportunity such as a weightless training school in space for child soldiers. This one is all about introverted geek girls realizing their fantasies of designer clothes, popularity, and Jane Austen style chaste love if only given the right situation such as the school male model heart-throb being a secret vampire. I liked Ender’s Game at the time and failed to see it’s flaws, but with a little bit of self-awareness later in life I came to see it for what it is. The girls who got sucked into Twilight should revel in the fantasy while they can.

Now that I’ve taken one bribe, I must offer the option to all. I’ve got a pretty liberal review policy already, but if you have a book you want reviewed on Rat’s Reading, I am now open to creative bribes as well. Not just any bribe will do, however. If I wasn’t willing to read a free book before, you gotta come up with something really unique or awesome to change my mind. It’s gotta be something good enough to get people to exclaim I can’t believe they did that just to get reviewed for the three schmucks that read that blog! For example, convincing your city to install a bronze bust of me in front of the main library.

Two caveats. This does not guarantee a positive review. Hence, I suggest authors and publicists avoid this opportunity. If it takes a bribe at all, much less one of my envisioned magnitude, to get me to read your book, it’s probably going to be a seriously negative review. Second, all bribes and who made them will be disclosed along with the review. Partially so folks won’t question my editorial integrity, but mostly so everyone can laugh at you (or me).

If that sounds tantalizing, offer me your bribes via Twitter or email at reading kingrat.biz.

Title: Twilight
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Cover creator: Gail Doobinin (designer) / Roger Hagadone (photographer)
Series: Twilight Saga; 1
Imprint / publisher: Little, Brown / Hachette
Format: Paperback
Length: 498 p.
Publication date: September 2006
ISBN-10: 0-316-01584-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-316-01584-4
Subject: Vampires — Fiction
Subject: High schools — Fiction
Subject: Schools — Fiction
Subject: Washington (State) — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.M57188Tw 2005

I was ready to give this an enthusiastic this is perfect review until the last 100 pages or so. Despite a muddled plot toward the end, it’s still the best young adult book I’ve read since Un Lun Dun, narrowly edging out Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker. The protagonist Lyra is exactly what I look for in young adult fiction: smart, inquisitive, bold, and almost unafraid of authority. The bad guys are believable. The plot is sort of a hero quest sort of tale, but instead of chasing some MacGuffin, Lyra leaves home to save a friend. It’s top notch.

Lyra Belacqua is a parentless child living at Jordan College in Oxford England. A somewhat alternate England, as this one appears to have World War I era technology, as well as witches and giant armored bears, but those come later. The biggest difference between the world Lyra inhabits and ours are dæmons. Personal spirits that accompany someone wherever they go. If they separate too far, both feel the distance keenly. When young, dæmons can change shape, though they always take an animal shape. But after puberty, dæmons settle into one form.

She lives at Jordan because her uncle Lord Asriel is politically connected. At Jordan she spends her days running the streets with servant’s kids causing all sorts of mischief. Until the Gobblers start snatching children. At first the Gobblers seem like a parental myth to scare their children: a criminal band that lures kids away never to be seen again. But they are real. After several of her gyptian (something like gypsies) friends disappear, Lyra talks her way onto the gyptian rescue party, heading north to Lapland where the children are rumored to be held captive. Lyra’s secret weapon is an alethiometer, a golden compass-like device which allows Lyra to determine the truth of anything.

The first thing that impressed me about the book is the character of Lyra. I think Lyra is the ideal of the kind of character I want in my young adult fiction. She’s smart, and smart throughout the book. Pullman doesn’t have her behave in an uncharacteristically dumb manner to move the plot along, ever. She’s curious and inquisitive. She thinks nothing of exploring the roof, or the catacombs. She’s bold. She gets herself into the gyptian rescue mission by accosting the leader of the gyptians and asking. Of course, she has the alethiometer too. I can’t think of any young adult protagonists that’s I’ve read who had all these qualities. Zahrah perhaps, but she’s not quite so bold. Lyra does not fear the unknown or the world. At one point in the rescue mission, the alethiometer tells her a kidnapped child is in a town nearby, but not on the way to the party’s destination. Rather than risk the entire mission, the leader John Faa decides to stick to the plan. Lyra heads off with an armored bear without the group (with permission though) to investigate.

Friendship and needing other people is a theme throughout the book. People always have their dæmons by their sides. They reassure. They help with things a person can’t, like pass a message on to another person’s dæmon who can pass the message quietly to the other person. A dæmon is a constant companion. Lyra also values her street urchin friends. She joins the rescue not because of duty, but because of friendship. They are all that she has, having grown up without her parents. She sort of attempts to attach herself to Mrs. Coulter as a role model, but it’s a bad fit fairly quickly. Lyra takes her leave when she believes that Coulter is involved with the Gobblers.

Towards the end, starting with the culmination of the rescue mission, I felt the plotting switched tracks too abruptly on a few occasions. I can’t say too much without spoiling it, but it was of the sort of transition that got me asking wait, how’d they get here? Not so much that it wasn’t explained, which is my usual beef when I don’t understand where a character is. Pullman explains it. They just seem to go a different direction without some logical steps that would normally happen, such as talking with other characters to let them know where they are going. It definitely makes it a faster pace though. Not awful. Just something I wish had better setup.

Highly recommended.

Some other blogged reviews:

• BitterSweetLife
• Boys Blogging Books
• Out of My Mind

Title: The Golden Compass
Original Title: Northern Lights
Author: Philip Pullman
Cover creator: Ericka Meltzer O’Rourke
Series: His Dark Materials; 1
Imprint / publisher: Alfred A. Knopf / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 399 p.
Publication date: September 2002 (originally 1995)
ISBN-13: 978-0-375-82345-9
Subject: Missing persons — Experiments — Fiction
Subject: Kidnapping — Fiction
Subject: Arctic regions — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.P968Go 1996

I finished Tobacco Road nearly two days ago. It’s taking me a bit to figure out what to write. In fact, I’m still not quite sure what I think about the book, but my memory will fade so I have to get something written for now.

Tobacco Road is a couple of days in the life of Jeeter Lester and his poor white trash family on a former tobacco plantation in Georgia. Where once the family owned the land for miles around, Lester is now a cotton sharecropper on the property. Only he has no money or credit for buying seed or fertilizer and hasn’t for years. Only the landlord’s disinterest in the place allows Lester and family to continue to live there. At this point in the description, you’d think this would be a Southern version of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

But it’s no Grapes of Wrath. The Lesters are racist, ignorant, lazy, and sex-obsessed. All except for racist are of the most extreme variety, and of the most callous sort for racist. The first chapter is a confrontation between Jeeter’s son-in-law Lov Bensey and Jeeter. See, Jeeter married off his 12 year old daughter Pearl to Lov, and a year later Lov isn’t so happy with the deal. Pearl won’t talk, sleeps on a pallet, and won’t let Lov touch her. He wants to know if Jeeter thinks it’s a good idea to tie Pearl down. The confrontation begins because when Lov stops by for this chat, he’s carrying a bag of turnips. Jeeter and family haven’t had food in so long that the entire conversation is a big dance around Jeeter getting the turnips. Eventually, Lov becomes distracted (and by distracted I mean dry-humping) by another Lester daughter, Ellie May, and Jeeter takes his opportunity to grab the bag of turnips and run. This is the start of the book.

The Lesters and kin are a caricature of the worst of the Southern white trash stereotypes. So much so that who Caldwell is satirizing is lost on me. Is this a parody of the South? Perhaps. It just seems too obvious. I don’t know enough about the perception of the South during the Depression to know. I’ve purposefully not looked for any deconstruction of this on the web. Tobacco Road has lost it’s relevancy to a general audience if it needs explaining.

Without that explanation, a lot of the humor fell short with me. The Lester’s are just so over the top stupid that I got bored. It’s kind of how I view clowns. It takes a rare clown to make me laugh. Jeeter Lester is not that clown.

Other blogged reviews:

• The View from Graustark
• Pechorin’s Journal
• The GB Club

Title: Tobacco Road
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Illustrator: David Fredenthal
Imprint / publisher: Signet / New American Library
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 159 p.
Publication date: March 1947 (originally 1932)
LC classification: PS3505.A322 T6 1932

Six months after starting (I skipped a month after mom died), I’ve come to the end of Stephen King’s serial novel, The Green Mile. I’m impressed, though this final chapter seemed anticlimactic. I haven’t read much Stephen King or horror, but I suspect anticlimactic is how I’ll read most horror. I expect awful things, then I close the book and nothing’s happened. The characters are just characters, and the words are just ink on pages. Despite good writing, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel lasting horror from a book.

For Coffey on the Mile, there’s little in the way of standard horror anyway. Rather than dread a what is to happen, King’s book makes an effort to relieve the reader of any dread of bad things. The characters, particularly Paul Edgecombe, have to face a sin they are about to commit, but it’s dread of a different kind. The victim provides absolution in advance. That may not be much solace for a real person in the situation, but I think it removes most of the horror that a reader would anticipate.

I liked the book. I liked the serialization. And strangely, or not so strangely, that’s all I have to say.

Title: The Green Mile: Part 6: Coffey on the Mile
Author: Stephen King
Series: The Green Mile; 6
Imprint / publisher: Signet / Penguin
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 138 p.
Publication date: August 1996
ISBN-10: 0-451-19057-2

I thought I would take a break from the slow reading of Ričardas Gavelis’ Vilnius Poker. It’s decent, but it’s dense and thus taking me a while.

So today I went up to Remedy Teas to read the penultimate installment in the Green Mile serialization Night Journey. Now’s the time for those who don’t want to book to be spoiled to click away.

Up until now, Paul Edgecombe, the head guard for the death row wing of Cold Mountain Penitentiary, has realized the John Coffey, the big dumb black inmate, has the ability to heal illness. The reader has also been introduced to the asshole guard Percy Wetmore and a couple of inmate (William Wharton, Eduard Delacroix) as well as a few of the other guards. Last installment, Wetmore took revenge on Delacroix by making his execution exceedingly painful. That was somewhat of a catalyst for an idea that Edgecombe had which is to be carried out in part five. He wants Coffey to heal the Melinda, the wife of his friend and warden of the prison, who has been stricken with brain cancer.

In order to do that, either Melinda needs to come to the prison or Coffey needs to go to her. Since she’s extremely ill, it must be the latter. With the assistance of all the guards except Wetmore, they sneak Coffey out to visit the warden’s wife. There’s not a lot of character development this time, except we see the kinds of hearts that the guards have. They all help. This book is the plot-driven build up to the end of the saga. Will they pull off the caper without being discovered? A lot of do something, encounter problem, solve problem, move to next step in the plot. And then, King leaves the reader with a cliffhanger as the caper ends.

Liked it.

Title: The Green Mile: Part Five: Night Journey
Author: Stephen King
Series: The Green Mile; 5
Imprint / publisher: Signet / Penguin
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 90 p.
Publication date: July 1996
ISBN-10: 0-451-19056-4

I really like part four of The Green Mile. Not for any of the supernatural aspects, nor even the goings-on at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Nah, what I really liked about The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix was the very first chapter.

At the beginning of the installment, an old Paul Edgecombe writes about writing while staying at the Georgia Pines old folks home. From the aside about his kids forcing him to move there, to the tenderness his ladyfriend extends toward him as he actually sits down to write of his part in John Coffey’s story. In between Edgecombe has an encounter with a particularly perverse orderly, one who works the job because he likes to lord it over the old and feeble. Much like Percy Wetmore, the sadistic pain-in-the-ass guard on the Green Mile. That first chapter has so much more real feeling emotion than the shock, horror, and anger later in the book when Eduard Delacroix’s execution doesn’t go according to plan.

That later part isn’t bad, but it is merely part of the growing escalation of what happens with John Coffey and (perhaps) Percy Wetmore in the last two of the serials. It raised the level of anticipation for them quite well, but in and of itself, I had a hard time feeling much horror or disgust.

Title: The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix
Author: Stephen King
Cover creator: Robert Hunt
Series: The Green Mile; 4
Imprint / publisher: Signet / Penguin
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 90 p.
Publication date: June 1996
ISBN-10: 0-451-19055-6

I buckled down and finished this book this evening. For some reason, my attention span hasn’t been good for the reading this week. But after a five hour nap I decided I’d rather stay in bed and read this than get up and do something productive.

Here’s the plot in a nutshell. Pre-Empire, Lando Calrissian is the owner of the Millenium Falcon. Gambling his way across the galaxy, he runs to the Sharu system to avoid some trouble. There he is roped in to retrieving the Mindharp of Sharu, the key to controlling vast monoliths of a past culture. His controllers? The governor of the system and a wizard. Seems Lando matches the legends of who will be the Messiah of Sharu. Or something like that. Anyhow, Lando supposedly will get a cargo of life crystals in return for his efforts, though he doesn’t really believe he’ll get any better than thrown into prison afterward.

While the synopsis above is somewhat logical, once the details have been added everything becomes pretty nonsensical. I won’t detail it here, to avoid spoiling you. Not the book. You, and your sense of logic. But I can put the nonsense aside because it’s a bubblegum media tie-in novel. Comes with the territory.

What bothered me greatly was playing Lando for a happy go-lucky and hapless gambler. Personality wise it just doesn’t match with what I remember from Empire and Return of the Jedi. Not just that he can’t get a break. As if he’s completely dumb. He’s a comedy act. Think Jar Jar Binks. And how much did people like Jar Jar? Very little.

Bah.

Title: Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu
Author: L. Neil Smith
Cover creator: William Schmidt
Series: Lando Calrissian Adventures; 1
Imprint / publisher: Del Rey / Ballantine
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 182 p.
Publication date: July 1983
ISBN-10: 0-345-31158-2