5. "Sharp Teeth" by Toby Barlow

Toby Barlow tackles the werewolf legend in Sharp Teeth, a novel-in-verse. While the plot coalesces somewhat slowly, the characters are compelling: a compassionate dog-catcher, a weary cop, and various members of the three werewolf packs prowling and plotting in the greater Los Angeles area.

There's a level of brutality in the book that can be difficult to take, especially in descriptions of dogfights and the cruelty perpetrated by some of the dogcatchers. But there's also a strong sense of vengeance toward those who exploit animals, exhaustion at the harshness of life, and hope and possibility. Barlow's poetry sometimes reaches eloquence, and I have to admit to misty eyes at the end.

4. "Last Watch" by Sergei Lukyanenko

Sergei Lukyanenko concludes his "Day Watch" series with Last Watch. Like the previous novels, this one consists of a mini-trilogy, three connected stories that contribute to a larger narrative. 

Anton Gorodetsky, our narrator and a Higher Magician on Moscow's Day Watch, travels to Edinburgh, Scotland, to investigate the murder of a young Russian man by what appears to be a vampire. Sent by Gesar, head of the Day Watch, Anton is surprised and wary to also receive offers of help from Zabulon, head of Moscow's Night Watch. When Anton arrives in Edinburgh, he discovers a complex conspiracy formed by a Light One, a Dark One, and a Higher Vamipre, who are seeking to find and use a spell created by Merlin. Not only are they willing to shed blood, but if they unleash the spell, they have the potential to destroy all Others (those with magic powers and/or natures). 

As usual, the world of the Others fails to fall into simple Light/Dark, Good/Bad binaries. Anton struggles with his own sometimes ruthless boss, as well as his compassion for human beings and his protective instincts as a father and husband. A foray to Uzbekistan adds a somewhat exotic flavor to the tale and fleshes out the character of Gesar more comprehensively. 

This may not be the best entry in the series--I think the first novel, Day Watch, was the strongest--but it's an entertaining and essential read for fans of the previous books. For anyone who hasn't read the earlier novels, though, I'd advise doing so before tackling this one.

3. "Monster" by A. Lee Martinez

In A. Lee Martinez' Monster, Monster Dionysus works as an animal control agent, sort of--he handles cryptobiological nuisances, and he prefers the night shift. When he's finished, he goes home to his girlfriend Liz, a succubus who leaves a sulfur smell on his clothes and scorches things around the house when she gets upset. Every time he wakes up, his skin is a different color, courtesy of a basilisk bite that also left him immune to cryptobiological venom.

One night, Monster encounters Judy, a supermarket clerk facing an influx of yeti. Not long after, he encounters Judy again, this time because trolls seem to be proliferating in her closet. Monster doesn't like Judy, and Judy doesn't like him, but they keep encountering each other because of the odd mystical animals that crop up wherever Judy does.

Meanwhile, an old woman named Mrs. Lotus keeps feeding her neighbors a special tea that turns them into cats. Mrs. Lotus knows that the universe has a special plan for Judy, and it's a plan Mrs. Lotus not only intends to thwart, but must thwart if she is to continue her own parasitical existence.

Monster is a fairly entertaining read, although the pieces of the plot take awhile to come together. It has nuances of A Wrinkle in Time, some of Terry Pratchett's work, and some of Tim Powers' novels but doesn't share their depth.

2. "Play Dead" by Ryan Brown

Ryan Brown manages to merge zombie lore, voodoo, high school football, small-town Texas, and teenage romance in Play Dead. The result pleasantly surprised me.

Cole Logan is quarterback of the Killington Jackrabbits, who are having their first winning season ever. He's also the son of the town's loose woman, inhabitant of a trailer that stands on cinderblocks, a sometime juvenile delinquent, and the neighbor of Black Mona, a crazy cat lady with a purported gift for black magic.

Unfortunately for Cole and his teammates, they're about to face the Elmwood Heights Badgers for the district championship. The Badgers play dirty, pumping themselves up with hybrid steroids and perpetrating acts of vandalism and destruction against the Jackrabbits. First they attack Cole and cut off two of his fingers. Then their attempt to prevent the Jackrabbits from reaching a game goes horribly awry, and the entire team drowns. Only Cole and the head coach escape.

Cole joins up with the coach's football-hating daughter, Savannah Hickham, a writer for the school paper with an eye on the biggest story of the year. Together, they enlist the help of Black Mona in resurrecting the team. She manages to bring the players back as zombies, but they have only a limited window of time before they "go bad," and if they lose their final game, all their souls will be forfeit.

Before the teams can meet on the playing field, however, Cole and Savannah have some pretty major problems to solve. There are 40 flesh-eating zombies roaming around Killington. The sheriff has arrested the entire Badgers lineup and isn't about to let them out of jail for a football game. And Savannah's father, haunted by an earlier tragedy, flatly refuses to coach the high-stakes game.

Parts of the book are predictable. Of course the Jackrabbits will win the game (but what happens to them after that?), and of course Cole and Savannah will fall in love. But what makes this book fun and quirky is how it gets from its entertaining premise to those foregone conclusions.

Starting over...1. Snow Angels by James Thompson

So, after maintaining this blog, then getting backlogged, then never catching up, then posting again for awhile, then abandoning the whole effort, I decided (a half hour ago, while reading in the tub) to try again. I'm starting my count and year anew, with Oct. 1 as the launch date. So here's what I've read so far this month:

Snow Angels by James Thompson is the first in a new series, set in Finland. I wanted to read this book partly because I enjoy Scandinavian crime fiction. (I know it's trendy, but I've been reading it for several years--before the advent of Stieg Larsson's books--and I tend to enjoy some of the lesser-known writers most, while I'm not a particular fan of Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, or Camilla Lackberg.) However, most of what I've read has been set in Sweden or Norway, and of course Arnadur Indridason exquisitely portrays Iceland. I'd never read or encountered any crime (or other, for that matter) fiction set in Finland, a country for which I have sort of an affinity because of the unique strain of orchestral metal that has originated there (I'm thinking HIM, Nightwish, Apocalyptica, maybe a few others I'm forgetting).

All that said, I found Snow Angels somewhat disappointing. Thompson may find his voice as he continues to write, but I found his style in this novel a bit too Hemingway-esque and elliptical. I think it was intended to convey the starkness of winter above the Arctic Circle, but to accomplish that, a certain amount of character depth was compromised. There was much telling rather than showing.

Weaknesses aside, Thompson does convey the toll of northern Finland's winter days of darkness: alcoholism, a high suicide rate, domestic violence, and religious extremism. At the center of the novel is the macabre murder of a Somali actress, a crime that highlights the country's xenophobia and racism.

Will I read the next installment? I'm not sure yet....

175. A book that shall remain nameless

I knew this one would be a gamble--the plot sounded bizarre, with the potential to be either really cool or really bad. I did read the whole thing but was appalled by the shoddy writing (eg "the gaze of which was directed at him") and the consistent stupidity of the characters. The aforementioned stupidity is even more galling because we're told, repeatedly, that these same characters are the most elite fighting/intelligence force in the world, dangerous, to be reckoned with, blah blah. Yet they forget basic things like, say, setting up a guard or sentry when they're investigating a crime scene inside a house. Hey, let's all pile into the basement, where our foe (introduced, I kid you not, as "arch-criminal and nemesis") can easily surprise us!

Perhaps most galling to me is the fact that this author has published several books through a mainstream publishing house with wide distribution. Yet it's clear that no one attempted even cursory editing or copy-editing to fix blatant contradictions, horrible sentences ("he complained about the bad food and complained miserably about how bad the food tasted"), and basic grammar and writing issues.

174. "The Apprentice" by Lewis Libby

Lewis Libby's debut novel, The Apprentice, is one of those books that's difficult to review immediately; I feel like I need more time to process it, but I'm also not sure more time would help.

The story revolves around an apprentice innkeeper who, during the course of a snowstorm, faces moral dilemmas, murder, suspicion, political intrigue, and first love. The writing is poetic at times and overly clunky at others; even though readers learn many of the characters' names, Libby continues to refer to them as "the apprentice," "the girl who had worn the yellow cloak," "the tiny girl," etc., which makes for awkward narration. The resolution is deliberately ambiguous, which contributes to my own ambivalence about the novel.