Friday, May 29, 2009

Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Ten years ago, Niki Ky and Daria Parker saw something unspeakable in an old house in Birmingham, Alabama. Daria has denied it, escaping into a frantic music career and various addictions. But Nikki hasn't been so fortunate. Diagnosed schizophrenic, she's lost years in a haze of therapy and antipsychotics. Now terrifying fragments of waking nightmares are reaching out to her, ghosts and demons driving her toward revelation and release, and she has begun to doubt that all the cracks in her reality are hallucinations.

Her dead lover, Spyder Baxter is calling to her from another world, an alien, impossible place where Niki is known as the Hierophant, a feared and prophesied sorceress who can open a portal between worlds. Forces of darkness and light are at play across the highways of America, forces that move inexorably toward the abandoned house the Niki and Daria have spent ten years trying to forget. And Daria will finally have to face what really happened there if she's to help Niki save a world....or destroy it.

Very fast paced, eloquently written story. One blurb on the back of the book says the author writes "like a Gothic cathedral on fire" and I could not agree more. The story gets kind of confusing sometimes but well worth the read. I will be picking up some more of the author's books.

4 stars

Friday, May 15, 2009

Shatter by Michael Robotham

Professor and psychologist Joe O'Loughlin gets called to the scene to try to get a woman not to jump off a bridge. She is completely nude, except for red heels and the word "slut" written on her stomach in lipstick. She is holding a cell phone talking to someone. When he is unable to save her the woman's daughter shows up at his front door telling him that her mother would never kill herself, not that way, she was terrified of heights. Joe believes her and is drawn into a sick twisted game with an AWOL soldier who's job was to "break" people the military had in custody by shutting down their senses so the only one in use was their ears, the only voice they could hear was his, and he would drive them to the breaking point. After another senseless death, a woman who was friends with the first victim, who is found in another bizarre way, nude, wearing only shoes a full fledged manhunt ensues. With Joe's personal life starting to fall apart and the twisted mind of the killer, you are led on quite a ride up to the very last page.

5 stars

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Professor Robert Langdon is called to help investigate the death of a scientist in a high security facility where the victim is branded with the ambigram Illuminati. This leads him, along with the scientists daughter, Vittoria Vetra, to the heart of Vatican City where a canister of antimatter was stolen from the lab has been placed, and will go off at midnight. The Vatican is about to close for the conclave due to the recent death of the Pope, but the prefretiti, the 4 cardinals who are unofficially chosen as the front runners for the papacy, have disappeared. It is now up to Langdon and Vetra, along with the Swiss Guards and the camerlengo, to find the cardinals before midnight as they have been warned that one cardinal will be killed in each hour leading to midnight in a very public place, with the 4 known ambigrams of the Illuminati branded on their chests. An ancient brotherhood that may still be active, a race against the clock to save the cardinals and to find that antimatter before it levels Vatican City, and other twists and turns will keep you reading long into the night.

5 stars

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Story about the fever that ripped through Philadelphia in 1793, killing over 3,000 people. The story surrounds a 14 year old girl, Mattie Cook, and how she deals with her family becoming infected and how she handles what she will do next when she thinks she is all alone. Not much of a review, but I didn't think it was much of a book.

2 stars

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

This Time of Dying by Reina James

This book is about the Spanish Influenza outbreak in England in 1918. The story centers around Henry Speake, a local undertaker, his relationship with his family, and a widow whose company he likes to keep. Kept me reading but I didn't really see the point of some of the side stories and it doesn't really end with a conclusion. Interesting insight as to how things were handled during the epidemic and other matters of that sort, but I was sort of hoping for more.