Book Review - Germ

Germ by Robert Liparulo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was the cover of this book that grabbed me, as I wandered through the stacks at a newly built library in a nearby town. I'm a sucker for great cover art, and this one grabbed me right away. Simple title, simple art, and intriguing concept: a mad - as in angry, in this particular case - scientist has created a deadly designer drug that can be programmed with DNA to assassinate anyone, anywhere. It can pick you out of a crowd. It can leap from person to person. It can cross continents as quickly as the common cold. And, as the tag line of the book says, if you breathe, it will find you.

I thought this would be more of a mystery, but it's pure action from the get go. It would make a great action/thriller movie, actually. I can see Daniel Craig as the ivory doctor, Allen, and the big redheaded bearded guy from the TV series Revolution as his bearish brother Stephen. Okay, that may have been in my head the whole time. I won't lie. This May or may not have to do with the fact that imagining Daniel Craig racing naked through the woods at one point was... Well, I digress.

Ahem, back on track.

If you're into suspenseful books with lots of guns, scary immortal assassins, creepy as heck bad guys, Nazis, naked doctors running through the woods and best of all, a fantastic, strong female hero who saves the day and maybe the world, this one is for you.

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Book Review - In The Land of the Dead

In The Land Of The Dead by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another short novella in the Benny Imura series, this slots in between books one and two, and is available on the Simon and Schuster website.

One of the reasons this only gets three stars is the spelling and grammar errors. I get it that this is a freebie for readers, but they couldn't find an editor - heck, even an intern - to give it a once-over with a red pen? Seriously? This is a big publishing house, surely someone could have spent an hour on this.

This seemed a little disjointed, almost as if it's parts that got sliced from the novel in the editing process. It was okay, but nothing super special.

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Book Review - Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage

Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage by Joe Darger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I requested this book from the library because I saw it billed as the true story of the family that was the inspiration for the HBO series "Big Love". I am a huge "Big Love" fan, and a few years ago started reading plenty of books on polygamy and Mormonism because the show got me fascinated with it. How could I resist?

Maybe the charm has worn off a little.

There's nothing wrong with this book, except that it's actually a little boring. The people behind it are just so ordinary; and I do understand that is the whole point of the book. They are trying to say, "Look how regular we are! We could be your neighbours!" and they're right. They are very ordinary. They had pretty ordinary courtships, albeit in plural, and have pretty ordinary marriages, where they fight sometimes and are happy sometimes and have tragedies sometimes and go to PTA meetings and parent teacher conferences and fret over buying Christmas gifts sometimes.

In other words, it's a life just like anyone might have, except there are three wives in the marriage instead of one.


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Book Review - Pure

Pure by Julianna Baggott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of my favourite post-apocalyptic YA reads - and I've read an awful lot of them in the last few years.

Pure takes place in a post-nuclear holocaust future, where everyone who didn't make it into the security of a dome shelter either died, or suffered terrible burns and mutations as a result of the bombs falling.

I really love the world-building in this book, and if you're a fan of that kind of thing, this is worth a read. It's also absolutely fascinating where the author's mind went, in including things like nanotechnology into the scheme of things, to create the kinds of situations... well, I don't want to spoil it for you. You just have to read it.

Fabulous characters, an intriguing setting that just when you think you understand it, veers off completely from what you thought, mysterious sub-plots, a tiny twist of possible romance, and some real jump-out-of-your-skin moments.

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Book Review - 77 Shadow Street

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Dean Koontz, and it's rare that I give a book of his a three-star rating, but I had so much trouble getting into this book, that I just couldn't push it any higher. I have a rule about books; I give them all a 100 page chance to suck me in. If they can manage that, I keep reading. If not, I feel no guilt for giving up.

By 100 pages I was only slightly invested in this book, and part of that had to do with cats. Koontz writes dog characters so well (his true fans will know what I'm talking about here!) that I was really curious what he would do with a pair of cats. The answer? Not much, really. They barely show up in the book. But when I checked to see if I'd made it past page 100 I was already in at 250+ and at that point decided it'd be silly to stop.

The end of this book is the best part. I just found it so disjointed at the start with introducing so very many characters at once that I had a hard time really involving myself with any of them. What I usually like best about Koontz books are how likeable the characters are and how invested I feel in their personal outcomes. There's a reason the Odd Thomas books make me cry (heck I cry every time I think about Stormy, but... yanno...). I didn't get that here, not until I was much further into the book because there are so many characters. I did wind up feeling close to a few of them by the end, but not the way I normally do in his books.

While this was a solid read, and had some really scary jumpy points in it, and some really tender sweet points in it, I wasn't quite as engaged as I usually am with books by this author, and that made me a little sad. But no less likely to read anything else he publishes, because I'm also that kind of fan.

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