Quick Book Reviews Blog

As has been mentioned in virtually every review of The Luminaries , there are times when grandiose authors seem to be just born out of blue and crash down into the world of literature like flaming comets, and Eleanor Catton, its author, is certainly one of them. Before getting into the book itself, I would like to warn potential readers that it is around 848 pages long (depending on which edition you choose I suppose), and is actually the lengthiest Man Booker Prize winner in history.

As those of you who have taken to reading this review site regularly doubtlessly already know, romance novels are certainly not up my alley, unless of course there is something extraordinary about them, and let's face it, there aren't that many books in any genre that could be labeled as such. However, from time to time, either when the mood itself swings in that direction or perhaps the holidays come creeping around I do find myself in a state of mind to give one of them a chance, and in this case I had the pleasure of choosing The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes.

It is said that artistic creativity, the kind true geniuses are bestowed with, never comes for free, always taking some sort of toll on the person... and as it happens, in some cases that toll ends up being their entire life, as was the case with Tennessee Williams, arguably one of the most prominent and influential playwrights of our time, perhaps even the greatest one the United States had ever seen. In Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh , John Lahr provides us with a rather detailed and in-depth biography into a strange and tormented life, a review into a fascinating fate. one that dragged its owner through hell and back and gave birth to an eternal star.

It seems that even though coming of age novels are pouring out one after the next, there is little new to introduce into the genre at this stage. Let's face it, the transition into adulthood can certainly be frightening, confusing, disorienting and enlightening, but it is something everyone goes through (barring some notable exceptions, we all know one of those) and in the end, there are countless other topics in life that deserve more attention.

As strange as it may be, it feels as if books are perhaps one of the few constants which we take for granted in our universe; once something is written on a page, it stays the same forevermore. Though virtually every book review can be different, they are all going to be discussing the same, never-changing subject, the words on the page.

The world created for us by Brent Weeks in his Lightbringer series is, following the second book in it, The Blinding Knife , is in a rather chaotic state: the satrapies lie in ruins, the old gods have reawakened, the world is plunged into a terrifying civil war, Gavin Guile has been captured and stripped of his powers... in other words, in the third book in the series, The Broken Eye , our protagonist Kip has his work cut out for him. Without giving away anything in the review, this book feels like the first half of a two-part finale.

The second book in the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife , picks up exactly where the last book left off. Needless to say, if you haven't read the first part yet, The Black Prism , then you should do so before potentially tackling this book for this is one of those series that needs to be read in the proper order to be enjoyed and understood.

Though in the real world politics and struggles for power are the cause of much pain and suffering, in the world of the book they are the fodder that makes for grandiose and epic stories, the kind literature doesn't forget. The Black Prism by Brent Weeks is the first part of the Lightbringer series , and though it certainly is in the realm of fantasy and magic, its overwhelming story is still founded in the very familiar realm of power and politics.

There come many times where real life brings to us stories so incredible and sensational that they feel as if they belong more in the realm of literature fiction than anything else. Of course, as is often the case, lives that took dangerous twists and turns are more or less shrouded in mystery, and perhaps one of the most fascinating ones is that of Lev Nussimbaum .

In recent years it seems that with his fans, Stephen King has been delivering largely hit or miss literature, at least if his book reviews are to be trusted. Fortunately, it seems that he managed to find his footing with his more recent works, and in my opinion Revival is certainly a grand step in the proper direction.

David Baldacci has long ago established himself as a master of thriller literature, and needless to say, he has further cemented that title for himself with his latest book detailing the exploits U.S. Army special agent John Puller, titled The Escape . To put it as briefly as possible, Puller is brought in once again to lend a hand in a matter of national security: he must find and bring in his own older brother, Robert, who recently escaped from the most secure prison on the planet. Of course, Robert wasn't there because he got lost on the way to the supermarket; he was convicted on charges of treason, amongst other crimes against the country.

The fantasy of humanity's collective doom and sinking back into a technological oblivion is one that has pervaded literature for ages, and exponentially so with the incredible scientific advancements made in the past couple of centuries. Steven Konkoly is a writer who decided to take a more realistic approach to the whole thing, gifting us The Perseid Collapse , the book which serves as the sequel to The Jakarta Pandemic and as a prequel to Event Horizon. As was mentioned in our review of the prequel to the Perseid Collapse series, the focus was placed on the survival of certain individuals during a most deadly flu pandemic.

When most people are dissatisfied with what they have, they either tend to: complain about it and pretend that will fix something or actually try and make incremental improvements to their lives in the direction they see fit. And then, of course, there are those like Eva and Iris in the novel Lucky Us by Amy Bloom, who decide to journey across the country in search of some kind of fulfillment.

The Watergate Scandal certainly remains one of the most infamous moments in U.S. Presidential history, marking a moment where a President was ousted from power not through force, but through exposition and law. Despite the extensive investigations and inquiries made by numerous parties into the affair, there are still many question marks pending to be answered, in great part due to the complexity of the entire cover-up that followed.

The Civil War which led to the creation of the United States of America is a subject that is thoroughly covered in school (or at the very least, in most education systems), but even so many of its notable topics are left out, some because there is simply no time for them, and others because they aren't exactly well-known. The role which four women – Belle Boyd, Emma Edmonds, Rose O'Neale Greenhow and Elizabeth Van Lew – played in the conflict falls into the latter category.

To begin with, I feel I must open with the statement that this series of books by Castaneda needs to be read in the order they were published in; otherwise, you are going to have a hell of a time comprehending, analyzing, following and being entertained. If you haven't read The Teachings of Don Juan yet, I would suggest you begin your journey into this wondrous world over there.

Ever since our distant ancestors began to live in societies, having the respect of one's neighbors has always been, to varying extents, an important rule of survival, especially in smaller societies where everyone knows everyone else. When neighbors start turning on each other, or worse, mobbing up on a specific target, then survival quickly becomes a very real issue.

The British Isles have often been portrayed, from the North American perspective at least, as having lots of charm and mystery to them, with their inhabitants having so many close similarities and, at the same time, vast cultural differences. It feels like a bizarre place on Earth where all is different and yet the same. American author Bill Bryson had the chance to fully immerse himself in this fantastic world upon moving to Britain in the early 1970s.

The Christmas holidays are a double-edged sword; though some revel in the celebratory occasion they present, others merely see them as a reminder of loneliness and emptiness. In Anne Perry's A Christmas Hope , we are presented with a somewhat paradoxical picture: Claudine Burroughs, a woman who lacks in nothing can't help but see the coming holidays as the latter.

The thriller genre has recently seen a brilliant addition to its already grandiose list of promising authors (promising in terms of what their future will bring, of course) when Eric Rill published his first novel, Pinnacle of Deceit . The main premise of the story is rather simple: there are four men who grew up in an Arizona orphanage, and many years later, they now find themselves as targets of a mysterious and terrifying killer, the unstoppable doom seemingly destined to turn their lives into a living hell.

Shattered teacups can be replaced, broken walls can be repaired, but time can never be rewound: the days, months, and years lost can be replaced by no means known to man. In Getting Life , Michael Morton chronicles the twenty-five years of his life that went down the drain as he spent them behind bars for the murder of his wife, a crime he did not commit.

Big great cities, especially ones revolving around gambling, are almost guaranteed to have some sort of bloody history behind them, with their founding fathers (and/or mothers, of course) being drenched so deep in corruption they revel in it. As you can imagine, the history of Las Vegas is far from being different; gangsters have put in place, managed and controlled (and let's face it, still do) the whole thing around the concept of gambling.

A majority of crime novels these days, taking place in the modern world, allow the protagonists to benefit from a host of different technological innovations which permit them to move their investigations forth. However thrilling it may be to see the sprawling web of technology catch all criminals, nothing can really replace the satisfying and accomplished feeling of pure logical deduction, something offered generally in crime novels taking place in centuries past, as is the case with Baudelaire's Revenge by Bob van Laerhoven, winner of the Hercule Poirot Prize for best crime novel.

The need for self-understanding and a personal identity is something virtually every human on this planet has, but we all go about it in different ways. While some people undertake grandiose journeys around the world, there are others who prefer to delve deep onto odysseys into their own minds. In A Life in Books by Warren Lehrer we are treated to the latter as we are presented the fictitious biography of Bleu Mobley, a man who had a rather interesting life, going from living as a child in a public housing project to becoming a journalist, a professor and a best-selling author, amongst other things.

Though most of Coelho's novels are rather well-appreciated by most people, Adultery is one of his more controversial ones, where it seems that people either love or hate it. The novel tells the story of Linda, an upper class housewife who seems to have it all: a promising career, a loving husband and wonderful children. However, she can never find true satisfaction in her idyllic life, and chooses to propel herself onto a rather daring adventure that may compromise the life she was already worked so hard to achieve.

It would seem that the world never ceases to find occupations with which to prevent master spies (and as it happens, art restorers) from resting on idyllic vacations, or at least, such is the case with Gabriel Allon in Daniel Silva's The Rembrandt Affair . Once again we followed the (at this point) legendary Mossad  agent as he is taken on a trek across the world in search for the perpetrators of a heinous and rather mysterious crime in Glastonbury: the murder of an art restorer and the theft of Rembrandt painting.

Let's face it, most pictures of people we don't know, even if taken professionally, have only the briefest of effects on us, being generally unmemorable, partly due to our inability to relate with them. However, there are some photographs which cannot fall into the category of the forgettable; there are some pictures where the depicted people end up touching us inexplicably. It is not unheard of for people to be drawn to complete strangers based on nothing more than their photographs and undertaking journeys to find them.

At this stage the life of Neil Armstrong has already been rather well documented, but the fact of the matter remains that his more introverted personality still left many blanks, questions to be answered, and room for who-knows how many more interesting facts. Thankfully, the man who is perhaps the most successful space journalist in history and close friend of Neil Armstrong for more than fifty years, Jay Barbree, has stepped up to the challenge of re-telling the story of the first man to walk on the moon in as much detail and accuracy as possible.

As we get older, with the help of our ever-degenerating brains, memories start to become fuzzier and fuzzier, in the sense that it becomes harder and harder to tell where blanks were filled in with the power of imagination. Some would argue that this state of affairs places countless people in a terrible predicament, and they certainly wouldn't be wrong. However, as we can see in The Confabulist by Steven Galloway, blurring the line between real and false memories can end up making life much more exciting than it has any right to be.

There is certainly no denying that Adolf Eichmann , otherwise known as the “Manager of the Holocaust” was a despicable human being responsible for the suffering and demise of countless people, and crimes for which there is no atonement. Nevertheless, he remains in himself a rather interesting figure, and the study of his “work” and the influence he had on people's minds both during and after the war (after he escaped in exile) can certainly yield some curious findings, both on the Holocaust and the human mind itself.

Deception is a rather interesting concept, observed even in various species of animals, at least the smarter ones. However, none except for humans have taken it to such a grandiose level, to the point where for many people, it is an essential part of daily life. What's more, the methods of deception have grown increasingly elaborate, though at the heart of it all remains the same principle: the need to lie.

At this point most of you have no doubt heard of the classic movie Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford, about a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard who is tasked with the “retirement” (AKA destruction, killing, murder, whichever suits your fancy) of numerous androids, robots made to be as human as possible in every way, allowing them to blend in with them. However, the novel on which the movie is based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick seems to get considerably less attention, which is somewhat understandable when taking into account its philosophical approach to the storyline, rather than something in line with the movie.

The step from the pre to the post-graduate world is a big one to take, one virtually nobody forgets, no matter if that final graduation was in high-school or university; being thrust into the big unknown full of expectations from it is an unparalleled, once-in-a-lifetime experience, the one during which we actually do some of our most crucial learning and adapting. Though the experience is, in itself, similar for most people, we all go through our own unique trials and tribulations, and in Graduates in Wonderland best friends (and authors of the book) Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale chronicle their post-graduation lives in as much detail as possible.

The loss of humanity is perhaps one of the greatest afflictions that comes for those who get embroiled in the immortal and restless spirit of war. Decisions must often be made between preserving one's humanity, or one's safety and well-being. In The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway we are presented with a rather grandiose and powerful exploration of how individuals preserve their humanity and redeem it in the most harrowing of times. The story touches on the lives of four characters, eventually intertwining with each other.

The idea that somewhere out there exists an idyllic place, one that fulfills all of our desires and fantasies, one where life goes by effortlessly and in pure pleasure, is an idea that keeps many people going, one that gives them an outlet to escape through. Though most people go to that place in their minds, very few and far in between are those who actually set out to find it physically, which is exactly what Griffin Dane does in Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold.

With The Club Dumas Arturo Perez-Reverte dishes out yet another page-turner, following the long and twisted journey of Lucas Corso, a middle-aged book hunter whose job is to seek out the rarest of works for private collectors. The death of a known bibliophile and the manuscript he left behind, that of the original The Three Musketeer , lead Corso to be brought in as an authenticator.

For many people, heading off to college is a defining experience, and perhaps the first time some are thrust into a completely alien setting on their own. Needless to say, there are countless novels out there detailing this rather common experience, but frankly-speaking, most of them feel like copies of each other and rather coarse attempts at sensationalizing the experience and portraying it in nothing but its extremes.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is perhaps one of the best-known works of literature on an international scale; so many spin-offs, recountings and even parodies of it occurred that it would be hard to live life without encountering it in one form or another. The infinitely famous book has a rather simple premise: a group of English schoolboys are washed up on a deserted island following a plane wreck, leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere with none but themselves to rely on.

There is no denying that from our perspective, life is a rather lengthy journey, one that transforms us many times over. And so, it shouldn't come as a surprise that countless questions surrounding our identity tend to be explored from time to time, with perhaps one of the more well-known ones being whether or not we remain ourselves when our morals and values change, or if we become someone else.

While the world was recovering from the First World War and, unbeknownst to all but the most perceptive ones, preparing for the second one, the Orient had its fair share of troubles. For one, China was dealing with an internal conflict as well as a Japanese invasion, with the inhabitants of Peking steeling themselves for the seemingly inevitable during the final days of the city's colonial period.

The ocean is in itself a vast mystery of which we have done nothing but scratch the surface so far, and though it covers so much of our planet, we often tend to forget about all of its innumerable inhabitants. Whether we realize it or not, our noisy ways have already affected marine life tremendously, and in War of the Whales Joshua Horwitz explores this issue from a very realistic and interesting way.

As advanced and progressive as modern investigative techniques may be, the fact of the matter remains that every year countless deaths go unsolved, and what's more, countless victims remain unidentified. Indeed, in the United States somewhere around forty thousand people die every year, leaving nothing but a mystery, their identities being completely unknown.

Landline by Rainbow Rowell tells the story of Georgie McCool and her dissolving marriage, one that seems to be falling apart like a house of cards, regardless of what she, her husband Neal, or the children want. Right around Christmas time, after having planned a trip to Omaha for the Holidays, Georgie gets the opportunity of a lifetime; writing the script for several episodes for a new hit television show, which would require her to stay put for the vacation.

Family history is a rather fascinating thing; though most of us may know general details about our genealogical tree's occupants for the last hundred years, few of us really have a concrete idea about what they were truly like. In The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai, we are presented with two researchers, Doug, a down-on-his-luck academic, and Zee Devohr, a Marxist literary scholar who fervently defends the various records (files, not music records, naturally) kept at her house from the former, whose research leads him to be in dire need of them.

We are all aware to one extent or another that the government is, at least to a certain extent, open to corruption, and things aren't always done as the rules state they should. In other words, governmental organizations and agencies, especially ones relating to national security, have taken the habit of operating in secret, which in turn gives them more power than they arguably ought to have over the population.

It has been around ten years since Lincoln Rhyme made all the headlines as the NYPD's hero to have caught the notorious Bone Collector . Just when it seems that Rhyme may live out his days as a genius forensic detective in relative ease and peace (at least as much as the job allows that), a fresh scourge takes hold of New York City, prowling its seedy underbelly in search of more and more victims.

In The Heist by Daniel Silva we are once again treated to the exciting adventures of Gabriel Allon, super Israeli spy and, somewhat incomprehensibly, an art restorer (I guess everyone needs a hobby). As it happens, Allon's talents in the world of art serve him time and time again, stumbling into one case after the next, with each one seeming to be made specifically for his skills.

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer is certainly not your typical thriller, being more of a postmortem investigation led by multiple people in different countries, each with their own reasons for doing so. The real “protagonist” of this whole affair is Emmett Kohl, an American diplomat who was suddenly murdered while dining in a restaurant in Hungary. As the investigation around this tragic event starts to unfold, it becomes clear that there was no shortage of people out there who would have preferred to see Emmett with the dead rather than the living.

There is seldom one specific event which launches a country into war; generally, a treacherous succession of events leads to an eventual boiling point, at which the catastrophe erupts.  In Act of War by Brad Thor, the United States are, unbeknownst to most of course, being subjected to such a chain of events, with an attack on them seeming rather imminent.

The history of our universe is, relative to us at least, virtually so infinitely long that we could not hope to learn it all in a single lifetime. Thankfully though, us humans aren't the kind to be bogged by such challenges, and we have been trying to retrace the universe's history and understand how humanity has come to where it is today, and how we have come to know all that we have.