war

Progress Update Friday – October 25, 2024

by Stefani

The Prophecy of the Yubriy Tree by Ben Spencer

Progress: 59 of 379 pages

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Every year, prophecy leaves fall from the Yubriy Tree. And every year, the Dayborn king sends his most trusted servants to collect the leaves and return them to the capital.

Only this year, one of the leaves drifted into the forest unseen.

Three lives will be forever changed by the undetected prophecy leaf.

The strong-willed daughter of a powerful family. The mysterious and reviled half brother of the king. And a talented but unlucky musician, desperate to write the song that will bring him good fortune.

Looming in the background are reports of the first dragon to appear in Ragar Or in over sixty-five years. And, as anyone familiar with Ragar Or’s history knows, when dragons appear, royalty dies.

How it’s going:

This is such an interesting idea. I was really pleased to get the ARC for it. So far the stories are interesting. I have read a chapter from 2 of the people mentioned in the synopsis and both were very intriguing. It’s off to a good start and I hope it continues.

Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

Progress: 7:25 of 11 hours, 19 minutes

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States.

Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

How it’s going:

If the hold times on this through my library is any indication, this book has been gangbusters popular. The hold on the physical book stands at 75 people, the ebook stands at 7 months, and getting the audiobook took my 3 1/2 months. So far, I am depressed. And I need a stiff drink. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Honestly, I will probably finish this one today and then if I can manage a review this weekend that’s great, but I might need to digest it a little bit.

Dystopian Climate Crisis Fiction: ‘American War’ by Omar El Akkad

by Stefani

American War by Omar El Akkad

Published: April 4, 2017 by Knopf

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

Rating:

Review:

I believe that there are two ways to write a really great dystopian novel. First, you set the book so far into the future that it doesn’t really matter how outlandish the world building or the situation are. Readers will look at it and think “Well, it’s 400 years in the future, I guess that could happen.” Second, you base it in a more recent reality, but change a few key situations or circumstances that logically explain how the world got to this state in the near future.

Unfortunately, this book doesn’t convincingly do either one. The premise of this book is that in 2074 the United States has a second Civil War. Ostensibly, the war is over oil. Oil has been outlawed due to climate change and some states decide that they want to continue using it and so they engage in a Civil War. After the war ends (about 20 years), there was a devastating plague that swept the nation and things have been in a state of crisis ever since. This book is set somewhere in the midst of the war when the main character and her family flee to a refuge camp to escape the war and the plague. I really wanted a better explanation for how the United States gets to a Civil War just 50 years from now. I simply didn’t understand how the conflicts about climate change and oil reach that boiling point so soon.

WARNING: From here on out there will probably be spoilers. But I find this book to be crap that I would recommend to no one, so feel free to continue at your leisure.

So, ostensibly this war is about oil. Except that doesn’t make any sense. Apparently climate change has gotten so bad that most of the American Southwest is just perpetually on fire and unlivable, and half of Louisiana is permanently underwater, and the ice caps no longer exist. I find it hard to believe that in the face of such catastrophic changes to the world that there would be so much climate change skepticism left to start a war over. Currently there’s a lot of nuance to climate change opinions. People who believe that it is entirely man made and we have to do something about it. People who believe it is a natural cycle of the earth that we have little to no influence over. People who believe it’s all made up and not actually happening. People who believe that it is happening, humans are responsible, but we’ll find ways to innovate solutions as times goes on. But despite this diversity of opinions, in 50 years time everyone either boils down into “let’s ban oil to help climate change” or “we want oil, because….we want it.” I find that difficult to imagine. I also find it hard to believe that there would be enough people who feel strongly enough about oil to start a war over it. Apparently there’s three states that started the war, and a few others joined along the way. Texas was part of it at one point, but it’s now part of Mexico for some reason. So they are kind of affiliated, but not really. It’s confusing. Let’s also ignore that even the most catastrophic climate change predictions state that the temperature difference will be about 1 degree in 100 years….

Really, what this author does it just replace slavery with oil and utilize all the same tropes and circumstances of the first civil war and overlaid it into the book. But instead of the Union we have “the blues”, instead of the Confederacy we have “the reds”. It was not well done. The author tells us the war is about oil but it isn’t. It’s about typical Old South tropes of racism, misogyny, and classism. It also doesn’t seem like this is even a world that can survive without oil in the first place. For example, “the blues” have warships that are supposed to enforce the oil ban, they have solar panels. But the solar panels are so inefficient that the ships regularly use their diesel engines to get things done….the author tells us this as an aside, like it’s a normal course of business. That was so weird. You ban oil but still haven’t advanced alternative energy sources enough to actually be useable? What?

Speaking of oil, apparently in this book the “Middle East” and “North Africa” decided to put aside thousands of years of conflict and culture differences to form a new world superpower. Where apparently everything is sunshine and rainbows. And things are so good that everyone in Europe is fleeing to this new land on boats as refugees. No explanation is given for how this happens, nor why. Just that it happened. Some of these countries have been having continued conflicts over religion, race, class, culture, etc for literally thousands of years. But, everything is cool now? In 50 years? That doesn’t seem likely either.

It also isn’t difficult to figure out that the author has overlaid current political differences (and his own political opinions) onto this book. “The reds” are bad people. They like guns, and oil, and hate women and gay people. “The blues” believe in trying to help the world, and love everyone, and want to save the planet. Huh, that sounds very 2016 to me. It’s egotistical and ridiculous. To think that the political stage wouldn’t have advanced past the tropes and stereotypes that the two sides throw at each other in current times is laughable.

There were a lot of other things that were laughable and ridiculous about this book but I just can’t devote more time to it. I only got halfway through and that was already a waste of my time. The next “great American novel” this is not.

Progress Update Fridays – June 7, 2024

by Stefani

Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen

Progress: 102 of 540 pages

Check this book out at: Goodreads

How it’s going:

Just finished some very interesting history bits. They talk about a tragic airplane crash that occurred while carrying U-2 test pilots back to California from Area 51. Because the project was top secret, the military couldn’t acknowledge the crash or it’s connection to the base. So the families of the ones who died didn’t learn what happened to their loved ones. They were just given a generic story that they died in an accident, and fed the media a story about a routine supply flight that crashed. Sad, but these are the kinds of things that happen when you’re dealing with top secret projects.

The Delicate Beast by Roger Celestin

Progress: 45 of 424 pages

Check this book out at: Goodreads

How it’s going:

So far, I am not quite sure what to make of this book. The author has a very interesting writing style. It’s compelling on one hand but quite confusing on the other hand. I find myself having to go back and reread things more than once because I got lost somewhere and don’t know what’s happening. I also am not sure what the first chapter has to do with….well anything. I am hoping we tie up that thread at some point, because it seemed totally irrelevant.

New Releases Wednesday – June 5, 2024

by Stefani

Tiger Chair by Max Brooks

Published: June 1, 2024 by Amazon Original Stories

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

When China invades America, guerrilla warfare explodes on the streets of Los Angeles in this provocative short story about the future of war from Max Brooks, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of World War Z.

China thought it would be a quick war, an easy war. But now, years later, as the insurgency on the streets of Los Angeles escalates but the propaganda never changes, a Chinese officer can’t keep silent any longer. Torn between loyalty to his country and loyalty to his troops, he writes a brutally honest—and possibly suicidal—letter home to unmask the truth.

Brooks combines his signature meticulous research with unforgettable characters in this landmark work of speculative fiction.

Follow Her Down by Victoria Helen Stone

Published: June 4, 2024 by Lake Union Publishing

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Decades of doubt, fear, and suspicion won’t let a woman overcome her trauma in a riveting novel of suspense by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Jane Doe and The Hook.

The murder of Elise Rockwood’s sister shattered her family. Their mother’s anxiety kept her housebound. Elise’s paranoid brother, Kyle, saw conspiracies everywhere. Elise numbed her grief in an aimless lifestyle that left her emotionally broken. All of them victims. A local boy eventually confessed, but the damage was already done.

Years later, Elise is reinventing herself. She’s bought a mountain lodge to be close to home again and to find stability. Not even an email from her ex tempts her into revisiting the past. But Kyle won’t let it go. He still believes there’s more to their sister’s murder—and the confession—than meets the eye. When Elise’s ex is found dead in the same forest where her sister went missing decades before, Elise is finally willing to listen.

The traumas of the past are reemerging. So is the truth. Elise’s greatest fear now is who will survive it.

Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire

Published: June 4, 2024 by Tor

Series Info: #3 of the Alchemical Journeys series

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Every night, a Moon shines down on the Impossible City…

New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire takes us back to the world of the award-winning Alchemical Journeys series in this action-packed follow-up to Middlegame and Seasonal Fears .

All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City―the heart of all creation―to keep it connected to reality.

And someone is killing them.

There are so many of them that it’s easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren’t limitless.

In the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks―control of the Impossible City itself.

Progress Update Friday – May, 17, 2024

by Stefani

The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

Published: January 30, 2024 by Redhook

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

A young woman descends into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge to break her family’s curse in this spellbinding contemporary fantasy debut.

For centuries, generations of Everlys have seen their brightest and best disappear, taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor, a woman named Penelope, never ages, never grows sick – and never forgives a debt.

Violet Everly was a child when her mother left on a stormy night, determined to break the curse. When Marianne never returns, Penelope issues an ultimatum: Violet has ten years to find her mother, or she will take her place. Violet is the last of the Everly line, the last to suffer. Unless she can break it first.

To do so, she must descend into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. She must also contend with Penelope’s quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted – and yet whose knowledge of a world beyond her own is too valuable to avoid.

Tied to a very literal deadline, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.

How it’s going:

I am listening to this one on audiobook. The narrator is lovely. She presents the material well and I find her voice very soothing. But this book is leaving me wishing that it was something more. There is precious little character building and even less world building. I have no idea who Violet is except that she looks very much like her mother. There is also a lot of narrative skipping but it’s not immediately clear which narrative I’m in, and with little world building I am often not sure who those people are, or why they’re relevant to the story. Hopefully it becomes more clear soon, I’m about halfway through.

Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen

Published: May 17, 2011 by Little, Brown & Company

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Progress: Page 20 of 540

Synopsis:

It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn’t exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada’s desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades.

Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing itself was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base. Until now.

Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror.

This is the first book based on interviews with eye witnesses to Area 51 history, which makes it the seminal work on the subject. Filled with formerly classified information that has never been accurately decoded for the public, Area 51 weaves the mysterious activities of the top-secret base into a gripping narrative, showing that facts are often more fantastic than fiction, especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make.

How it’s Going:

I am only just starting this book, but so far it’s very interesting. I have learned several interesting tidbits. Like that the original entity that claimed ownership of Area 51 was the Atomic Energy Commission. And there’s a lot of shady dealings and secrets surrounding them, including that they were the entity that covered up the true nature of the Manhattan Project. Which is quite an interesting correlation to say the least. I am very interested to see what else is in this book.

Review: Apeirogon by Colum McCann

by Stefani

50185600._SX318_SY475_ (1)Apeirogon by Colum McCann

Published: February 25, 2020 by Random House

Buy this book at: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

Synopsis: Colum McCann’s most ambitious work to date, Apeirogon–named for a shape with a countably infinite number of sides–is a tour de force concerning friendship, love, loss, and belonging.

Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their daily lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on, to the schools their daughters, Abir and Smadar, each attend, to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate.

Their worlds shift irreparably after ten-year-old Abir is killed by a rubber bullet and thirteen-year-old Smadar becomes the victim of suicide bombers. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them and they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace.

McCann crafts Apeirogon out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material. He crosses centuries and continents, stitching together time, art, history, nature, and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate, and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our time.

Rating: 2 star

Review: I really wanted to love this book because I was so entranced by the first half of it. In the end though, this book made my brain hurt. It was physically exhausting to read. This is due solely to the style that it was written in. It seems like stream of consciousness more than anything else and when it was done I felt like I needed a very long nap.

The author has written this book as 1001 micro-chapters. Most of them are no longer than a paragraph. The author is referencing The Arabian Nights clearly because he frequently talks about this throughout the book. The idea is that you get little snippets of many different stories and through reading the whole stories of Bassam and Rami are slowly revealed. I liked this as it is a physical manifestation of the title. An apeirogon is a polygon with countably infinite sides (I googled that). Thus we have a book with numbered infinite chapters. I like that play on language and could picture in my head when we following on side of the story and then branched off into another, like creating a shape.

This book is also beautifully written. The prose is almost like a poem. Early on I was a bit confused at the sudden, jarring shift in narrative every few paragraphs but I learned to let it wash over me like a wave. And as we progressed further into the book the stories of the two men became more apparent. The stories were heartbreaking. I cried for Bassam and Rami. I agonized with them over their feelings about “the enemy” and their slow transformation into not seeing one another as “other” but as “friend and fellow father”. I loved it and was immersed in the beauty.

Unfortunately this book was just so long. While I was immersed in the story, I had to make a conscious effort to pull out the bits of the story about Bassam and Rami amongst the other detritus. In between relevant bits of narrative we talked about bird migration, history, ecology, biology, architecture, religion, politics, war, fiction, geography, Biblical studies, scripture, ancient weaving techniques, symbology in women’s clothing over time….honestly I could go on with this list for several weeks without running out of things to list. This audiobook was 15 hours, 20 minutes long. It was physically and mentally exhausting to continue to follow the actual bits of plot and after awhile it just became white noise. I was too exhausted to continue paying any attention at all.

I am saddened that I didn’t like this book more because it’s a wonderful story that is written in a creative, beautiful way.

Review: Scent of Magic by Maria V. Snyder

by Stefani

scent of magicScent of Magic (Healer series #2) by Maria V. Snyder

Published December 25th, 2012 by Harlequin MIRA

Cover and synopsis provided by the publisher.

Buy this book at: Book Depository / B&N / Amazon

Synopsis:

Hunted, killed, survived?

As the last Healer in the Fifteen Realms, Avry of Kazan is in a unique position: in the minds of friends and foes alike, she no longer exists. Despite her need to prevent the megalomaniacal King Tohon from winning control of the Realms, Avry is also determined to find her sister and repair their estrangement. And she must do it alone, as Kerrick, her partner and sole confidant, returns to Alga to summon his country into battle.

Though she should be in hiding, Avry will do whatever she can to support Tohon’s opponents. Including infiltrating a holy army, evading magic sniffers, teaching forest skills to soldiers and figuring out how to stop Tohon’s most horrible creations yet: an army of the walking dead—human and animal alike and nearly impossible to defeat.

War is coming and Avry is alone. Unless she figures out how to do the impossible…again.

 

Rating: 4 star

 

Review:

Let me just start this by saying, I loved this book.  Every page was a joy for me to read and I couldn’t wait to see where things would go.  I read the first book in this series and fell in love with it and couldn’t wait to read the second one.  The cover was amazing, the synopsis was amazing, and I jumped at the chance to read it.

This book picks up just a handful of days after Touch of Power ended.  Avry and Kerrick have been spending some time, ahem, getting to know each other better.  Now they have to get back to work.  Kerrick is going to go meet up with Prince Ryne and prepare their army to meet with Estrid’s troops to take on Tohon’s attack.  Avry wants to go find her sister and do what she can to get her away from Jael and set things right with her.  And so the two of them split up, with Kerrick promising to keep Avry’s miraculous survival a secret so that no one suspects she is still alive.  This is where we get to the narration of the story.  We have two different stories being narrated, Kerrick’s story and Avry’s story. I found this an interesting approach that complimented the story overall.  We haven’t heard much from Kerrick’s perspective before and I found him to be a great character.  I knew he was a strong, intelligent, but stubborn individual but hearing his narration took his character to a whole new level.  I like Kerrick more than I did before.

Avry is still just as fantastic a heroine as she started out in Touch of Power.  She still has a few moments of being sacrificing to the point of stupidity, just like in the prior book.  But, overall, she is everything a book heroine should be.  She’s strong, smart, determined, stubborn, resourceful, and compassionate.  Why can’t we have more heroines (particularly in YA ficiton) like her?  My only complaint is that she didn’t seem to be doing much.  Yes, she was helping Estrid’s troops but it was mostly just day after day of the same with a few things thrown in on the side.

The plot was very interesting, but I admit that in places it seemed to drag and there wasn’t much going on.  This was supposed to be the preparation for war with Tohon and Tohon’s attack.  We got some preparations for war, but because neither Kerrick or Avry was involved in that planning the reader didn’t get to see too much of it.  The attack by Tohon was good and things really started to get interesting.  I also really like the secondary plot of investigating the properties and abilities of the Death Lilies and Peace Lilies.  I have to say that I was hoping to see more of this than we did.  We had characters lost and characters returned.  We learned more about the depths of Tohon’s evil mind.  I also think the title of the book is appropriate for the secondary plot that was explored.  Lilies have the ability to know if someone is magically inclined, and we also meet a character who can literally sniff out the magic of others.

Overall this book did exactly what the second book in a series is supposed to do, move the plot forward, and entice readers to read the next in the series.  Though I felt the plot could have moved a little quicker, I am not disappointed by where it is going.  And that ending, holy crap!  How long until the next book again?

A free copy of this ARC was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you Harlequin for a great read!

 

 

 

Collapse by Richard Stephenson

by Stefani

Collapse by Richard Stephenson

Published July 5th, 2012 by Stephenson & Powers Publishing House

Picture and synopsis from the Goodreads book page

Author’s Website: http://rastephensonauthor.blogspot.com/

Book can be purchased at: Amazon (I also found a listing at B&N, put it was just for the paperback and at like $40.00 so I decided not to list it here)

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  No compensation or promise of good review was promised in exchange or the book.

Synopsis:

America is falling, ready to join the Roman Empire as a distant memory in the annals of history. The year is 2027. Tired and desperate, the American people are deep in the middle of The Second Great Depression. The Florida coastline is in ruins from the most powerful hurricane on record; a second just like it is bearing down on the state of Texas. For the first time in history, the Middle East has united as one and amassed the most formidable army the world has seen since the Third Reich. A hidden army of terrorists is on American soil. This is the story of three men: Howard Beck, the world’s richest man, also diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Richard Dupree, ex-Navy SEAL turned escaped convict. Maxwell Harris, a crippled, burned out Chief of Police of a small Texas town. At first they must fight for their own survival against impossible odds. Finally, the three men must band together to save their beloved country from collapse.
Rating:

Review:

I was not really sure what I would end up rating this from the beginning until the very end, I still am not entirely sure that’s the right rating.  This one was difficult for me since I honestly did enjoy the book very much.  But even though I enjoyed it, I didn’t (and still don’t) feel it was as good as my usual 4 or 5 star book.  So this is somewhere between a 3 and 3.5 star book.

Collapse is a story about the demise of the United States.  Debt is ever mounting, the country is in a never-ending war with the Empire of Iran, a hurricane has devastated Florida and killed millions, wildfires rage across much of California, and that’s just the beginning.  The novel follows several characters on their individual journeys through the tumult all over the country.  There is Richard DuPree, a former Navy SEAL who is currently imprisoned for murder in California.  There is Malcom Powers the current President of the United States. Maxwell Harris is the Chief of Police in a small town in Texas who has spent most of his career crippled and addicted to painkillers.  And finally we have Howard Beck, the wealthiest man in the world and creator of the world’s very first true artificial intelligence program. The story is told alternately from all of their points of view as events unfold until finally the circumstances bring all of the together.

I really enjoyed all of the individual characters.  We didn’t see Malcolm Powers as much as I might have liked, but he was a good character when we got him.  Max Harris was my least favorite of the characters and I can’t really say why.  There was nothing wrong with the character, I just found him boring. Richard was fascinating, I looked forward to every single one of his chapters so that we could learn more of his story.  My favorite character however was Howard Beck.  He was funny, witty, and really just took the story to another level.  His interactions with his AI program (Hal) were priceless and Hal became a character in his own right as a result.
The plot of the novel was also very good.  Everything that happens in the book was something that you can read safely because it seems like it would be so far away if it ever happened.  But at the same time, looking around this country, you could see the possibility for all of it to actually happen.  To me, that is what makes a good dystopian novel. A plot that seems far away but entirely plausible given the current state of events in the world.  I really loved seeing the individual plots moving forward and wondering how it would all come together and bring these people into the same sphere of reality.

So all of these things sound really excellent right?  What could possibly be giving this a 3 star rating?  Well, here it is.  There was a lot of jumping around in this novel, both in timeline and narrators.  While I liked the narrators, we jumped around in the plot timeline so much that it made me feel like I was reading through 6 months worth of plot even though it all takes place in a few days.  Because we jump around narrators so often, a lot of things get repeated.  I think I heard about the impending hurricane in Texas probably 6 times before it actually happened and about 8 times after.  Every time we switched narrators, we got told a lot of the same things that we’d just been told by the last one.  This got a bit tedious and made it harder to engage with the plot.  It also got predictable and tiresome to have EVERY chapter end in a cliffhanger.  I spent a lot of time wondering what the cliffhanger for that chapter would be rather than focusing on the plot, not a good thing.  I think the right editor could tighten up the storytelling a bit and really make this sing even more than it does right now.

The final shining star for this novel is the ending.  While we had cliffhangers through the entire book, I didn’t feel like we ended on that big of cliffhanger.  Maybe a little one, but nothing major.  If the story was over and no other story was forthcoming I would have been completely satisfied with the ending.  With another story coming, it intrigued me enough to make me want to know.  It was the perfect way to end this book and I loved it.