The Sirens of Titan- Kurt Vonnegut

| cgkinnett

When a good friend recommends a good read, I jump at the chance to see for myself what caught their eye and held it. In the case of The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, I was definitely not let down and by the end of the book I had so many feels and so many threads of thought. This is what a great piece of work does. It branches and fractures your thoughts well beyond the pages of the book.

That being said, let’s dive into this journey. From the start of the book we are given a somewhat reliable path that our main character will be taking; we are given the dots but they are by no means connected. And as X, Y and Z come to pass, we are taken on a journey whose settings exist from the Sun to Betelgeuse. As the scenery changes, so do the characters. This book contains probably the biggest evolution of a character I have had the pleasure of encountering.  Malachi Constant is one of our mains; beginning his journey with his full name, which is incredibly important to him. His name is his birthright and his claim to millions. As his situation changes, including but not limited to, the planet on which his story continues, he becomes Unk, a man stripped of everything from names to memories. He next becomes the Space Wanderer, nameless, planetless, helpless. He is stuck in his story, a pawn of something far greater.

This becomes a bigger and more important question as the novel progresses. Is something greater occurring? Who is pulling these strings and orchestrating all life on Earth? We think we know. In fact you’re entirely sure you know for the course of the whole work. Except you don’t, not even a little bit. The fact that someone/something could be pulling the strings your/our/my whole life is an intimidating thought. But what if this puppet master has a puppet master of his own? Being omniscient allows you to be all and see all, yes, but why does that become an inherent right? And how do this omni know whether what they are seeing and doing is not an orchestration all its own?

This is what made reading this book so much fun! Despite the fact that fairly close to the inception of the story, we are given a map, there are so many unbelievable twists and shocking turns that I challenge you to plot this course and get it completely right. Vonnegut’s whimsical voice creates a fantastically beautiful narrative. His descriptions of the world are abstractly and concretely breathtaking. .

If you need a read that is both quick and thought provoking, pick up The Sirens of Titan here

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Shel Silverstein crawled inside me maybe. Free write #3

| cgkinnett

It’s a pain night. No sleep tight,

For the bed bugs will surely bite. 
They’ll scratch and tear

And leave you bare 

For that’s why they are there. 
It comes from your insides. 

It creeps and it hides. 

For that is the reason it slides
Up and down your body whole 

This pain begins to take a toll. 

For eating you up requires no soul. 
It’s a pain night. 

No sleep tight. 

For that would be too easy, right? 

Menagerie- Rachel Vincent

| cgkinnett

Former English teacher and YA goddess Rachel Vincent is back with a new story and man is it compelling. Menagerie takes place in a world in which cryptids are out in the open and known to humans. They do not however coexist. Seen as less than human, shifters, succubi,minotaurs and others have less than no rights and are either captured and exploited or captured and hunted on game reservations. They are treated as animals. The vein of capture and exploitation is the one which we explore alongside Delilah Marlow who has grown up her whole life believing she was human. On the night of her birthday, Marlow and friends visit the famous Metzger’s Menagerie and things go horribly, devastatingly wrong. What follows is an expose of sorts on the mistreatment of these “creatures” and the lives afforded to them as subhumans.

Vincent has a real knack for combining detail and emotion, causing the reader to become incredibly invested in Marlow’s plight. We root for her and mourn with her and applaud her bravery. The way Vincent writes is so compelling. Her characters have a true depth to them that will tug on even the hardest of heartstrings. Menagerie puts a spotlight on creature cruelty in a very upfront way as these creatures are capable of shifting into their human forms, putting a face to the cryptid and a soul to the character.

While the storyline occurs in the near present with all the trappings of reality (cell phones, the Internet and YouTube), the feel of the world is very old timey and the story progresses the menagerie itself becomes a character. Like traveling ciruses and freak shows of the past, Metzger’s is all glitz and glam on the outside with loud music churning through speakers and brightly lit bulbs strung from tent to tent. We as readers though, know the whole story. And man is it twisted.

Upon looking Menagerie up on Amazon, it has a parenthetical detailing The Menagerie Series Book 1 and that made me so excited to know that we will get to continue to journey alongside Delilah Marlow who is such a strong and independent female lead. Alas, as I am not an oracle, I will have to wait alongside my fellow mortals to see what the future holds for the Menagerie. 

Four out of five books to Mrs. Vincent. You can get a copy of Menagerie for yourself here.

An uplifting free write

| cgkinnett

The sky held death in its clouds. All the shades of shadow loomed over the earth, casting gloom from one side of the horizon to the other. The vast coverage provided by the clouds caused the greenery on the ground to look as though it had been pained with soot and ash.

Beams shone brightly from cars as they zipped from one locale to the next; spotlights in the darkness. Street lamps flickered on despite the midday hour. The sun was ready to shine but the clouds would not hear of it. They held her hostage in her own sky. Every time she tried to break through the clouds shook themselves, echoing across the heavens. And each time this rumbling overcame them the clouds would send down a bolt of  deadly energy for good measure.

“Do we have your attention now?” they were asking.

Their tyrannical rule of the sky angered the sun. On this day in particular she was not in the mood for their sass. She resolved that she was not going to let them dictate when she could or could not shine. Bringing herself up to maximum brightness, she started to shake like the clouds and rumble like the clouds and strike down like the clouds. And lo, the clouds took note of the sun and were shocked that she was standing up for her shine.

In that one moment of shock their guard was let down and the tiniest bit of sky opened up allowing one of the sun’s rays to reach the earth. It was just for a moment however and then her light was extinguished. Swallowed up by the shadow. And the world was plunged into darkness once more.

Not A Review

| cgkinnett

Retrograde

I  whispered from car to car, always in the shadows. I poked my head out from behind the tires just enough for my eyes to get a quick glance and then on to the next.

Quick.

There was one human girl who was about to reach her car. She hadn’t seen me…yet..

Slowly, I stalked out from behind the blue car and crossed to the other side of the lot to a shiny red one. In so doing, I crossed her path. She saw me and I saw her face when it registered what was happening.

I’m sorry, I thought. And looked her straight in the eye. I knew the glint of my bright green eyes would send a shudder down her and in turn I arched my back, striking a pose before her.

She got in her car and I darted away, knowing that I would be on her mind all day.

I looked back as she drove off and wondered what the day held for her.

I hate when she drives me downtown. It’s great and all, this thing she has going. But it’s almost over and that is making her anxious. When she drives me downtown three times a week we end up circling the same three block by five block square sometimes for like 20 minutes, she creeps and dives and her breaking habits sometimes give me a headache but she is great at helping me into a parallel spot. We are really good at parallel parking. toot. toot. Sorry, that was my horn. Anyways, so today we were driving and driving and we finally found one on the very edge of the radius. Winning! She took my good pal Glamdring and off they went. It was a great spot. Right next to a hotel so there was great people watching. Nice and sunny too.

Whenever someone first pops my top, I usually let out a refreshing sigh and my insides get all bubbly and fizzy. Sometimes, however, I fizz up too much and some of me seeps out. Oops. I can’t help it…I just get so excited. When I was opened today, that’s exactly what happened. One of her coworkers was using the desktop to print and it overflowed on to the table, managing to hit some of the keyboard in the process. He handed me over and I sat patiently on the desk next to his Mac which she was using. Reaching across the table, she showed someone which of the delivery bags held the brownies. Upon sitting back down, her elbow tipped me over. I couldn’t stop myself or control where I fell. I couldn’t stop!

I saw it coming. It was like my history flashed before my screen. I might’ve blacked out for a second. As a human, she needs water. Me? I’m allergic as hell. It’s deadly. Keep that shit away from me. So, I had been watching as she slowly drank the first one and liked it so much she opened a second. The thing was full; she’d only taken one sip of it and as she sat back down I saw it happening. And then it happened. Right there on my keyboard. How would you like it if I tossed* (stay with me now it’s hypothetical) on you a cup of something that could KILL YOU INSTANTLY!!!! You wouldn’t like it now would you? She shrieked and he scooped me up upside down and patted down with tons of paper towels. Luckily, none of it seeped in between my buttons and I was okay. Don’t worry. No lives were lost.

Comprised of almost 20 books, we are going home with her in installments. She took us out of the dark boxes and now we are all going to have shelves of our own. We’ve been arranged heaviest to lightest and sit proudly by the window behind one of her bosses’ desk. As she reached for the topmost in the stack, she reached her fingers over as many of us at one time as she could. We went with her to be added to a bag. Half way out from behind the desk we began to shift in her hand. We were slipping. We weren’t going to make it to the table. We started to fall. We’ve fallen to the floor. Skattered. No longer a “we”.

The Ghost Network- Catie Disabato

| cgkinnett

Found footage, or rather found manuscript, is the style of Catie Disabato’s The Ghost Network. Disabato herself is our narrator, using footnotes to communicate with the reader as she pieces together the manuscript which was left to her after the world’s biggest pop star (like Taylor Swift big) vanishes without a trace. What follows is a mystery that unravels at a good pace and leaves no stone left unturned. The premise of the story is incredibly layered and well written and only gets muddy on a couple occasions.

While Molly Metropolis is a fictional pop star, the story is interspersed with references to real events and people like the MTV Awards and Britney Spears (Tay is not mentioned). Additionally, the New Situationists (the Illuminati like group at the heart of the novel) are also a real entity. The story is steeped with the sects history and infused with mystery when it is discovered that Molly herself was obsessed with the super secret organization. The question is, is her disappearance related to the group? Disabato races to track down the sources used in the manuscript to do interviews of her own and as she does so, we as readers are taken along for the ride.

The basis of the New Situationists beliefs is, essentially, that all art has already been created and the only way to make something new is to improve upon something that already exists. Molly’s goal, in keeping with the NS’s beliefs, is to become the world’s biggest pop star (ambitious little tyke) and in so doing she shape the current track of pop culture (think Lady Gaga with all her little Monsters).

As the mystery of what happens to Molly is unraveled we learn that maybe things aren’t as clear as they could be, providing us not with an unreliable narrator but with unreliable sources and witnesses who twist information to suite their needs. This element heightens the mystery as we as readers truly do not know whom to trust as true.

There are many twists and turns in this book and they make for a really good story with many facets. The use of footnotes to incorporate the narrators thoughts was well done. There were no gaping holes in the plot of the mystery however everything is not neatly tied in a bow at the close of the story which is what I was hoping would be the case…because who wants a neat bow?

I award four out of five books to The Ghost Network for a job well done on unraveling a mystery that could have been much more rambling.

The Ghost Network can be purchased on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Network-Novel-Catie-Disabato/dp/1612194346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443558849&sr=1-1&keywords=the+ghost+network

Black Mass

| cgkinnett

Despite the fact that today is Thursday and not yet the weekend, I still wanted to contribute to the opening numbers with my [not so] measly  $11.50. The showing was sold out and the atmosphere in the theater was excited as the lights went down at the Alamo Drafthouse on 6th Street.

Black Mass, directed by Scott Cooper, is the story of James “Whitey” Bulger and features an all star cast the likes of which haven’t been seen in a mafia movie set in Boston since, well, The Departed in 2006. Where the Scorsese flick alludes to a Bulger type figure in Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of well established mob boss “Frank Costello,” Black Mass is the telling of the events that lead to Bulger’s rise to power in the Boston area known as Southie.

Bulger, played by Johnny Depp, is an incredibly chilling figure who is not to be trifled with. Even before he becomes the towering figure that history now knows him as. His crystal blue eyes pierce you even as an audience member. The mannerisms adopted by Depp are truly telling and as the movie progresses, you are able to tell when Whitey is about to do something “bad.” I believe that this performance is what will bring Depp back into awesomeness and out of his Burton spiral.

But I digress.

John Connolly’s (Joel Edgerton) task force at the FBI is cracking down on the mafia presence in Boston in the late 80’s and in so doing decides to make an “alliance” with his friend from the old neighborhood, Bulger, who has juicy information on the “Italians.” A group of people who are more talked about than shown on screen. What could go wrong? Connolly gets in waaaaay too deep and his blind eye towards Bulger and the mobster’s curiously clean slate begins to raise some eyebrows with the higher ups. Murder and mayhem ensue. I lost track of the body count. After a while however, the plot became so transparent that it was almost irritating. Whenever a problem arose Bulger’s first and only solution was murder. These actions are what makes him a great psychopath but not a good main character and it is because of this that the movie was so predictable. The story itself is told as Bulger’s posse (all rounded up and jailed) divulge their secrets about their finished  leader. They are aged out and defeated. The movie ends with stills detailing all of their sentences. (A cop out technique as bad as narrating in my book.)

As a whole the movie was just okay. Definitely not the be all end all that the previews made it out to be. I give it a 3.9 out of 5. The pacing was good and the writing was fantastic (quite a few really funny moments) but the score was incredibly cheese and the plot was transparent in a not so good way. Plus, points way off for Benedict Cumberbatch’s atrocious attempt at a Boston accent.

Poor Sherlock.

 

Disclaimer- Renee Knight

| cgkinnett

Wrapped in mystery and veiled in intrigue, Disclaimer  by Renee Knight wastes no time in hooking the reader into a nonlinear scandal.

Disclaimer takes us on a he-said-she-said to rival all others and with several narrators over the course of the book, it is up to the reader to take everything that is said, and all the events that unfold, with a grain of salt. Who is recounting these events at their truest? This is an interesting way to allow the story to unfold; it fills you in as is seen fit. However, it took me a few pages to get in the groove of the narrative style and realize that I wasn’t as confused as I thought I was. I just didn’t have all the facts. Which is precisely how Knight draws you in.

Catherine Ravenscroft had gone on holiday with her husband and young son to Spain. It is 1993. When her husband is called home for business, Catherine is left to her own devices. Devices that 20 years later are portrayed in a scandalous tell all that starts with the disclaimer, “All events and people portrayed herein…”

The contents of this book within the book tell of a woman and her young lover and the tragic fate he meets. But was it so tragic? The aforementioned unreliable narrators (who shift between Mrs. Ravenscroft and the father of the deceased “lover”) tear the reader back and forth between belief of this poor man and his lost son and the woman to whom these events actually transpired. At times, you despise Cath. At times, you despise the old man (for he truly is cray cray). I really love the doubt that Knight develops in all her characters; their actions are at times capricious, their voice becomes tangled in hearsay.

Through it all however, Catherine Ravenscroft proves herself to be a wonderful leading lady. She is foiled and tarnished from every conceivable direction. And just when you think she has been beaten down to the point of no return she stands up and surprises everyone (characters and readers alike).

I give this book four out of four books. The pacing was good and the mystery had me intrigued through the end. It was so good that even now, two days after finishing it, I’m still thinking about the secret Cath held for over 20 years.

 

Disclaimer can be found on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Disclaimer-Novel-Ren%C3%A9e-Knight/dp/0062362259/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442156964&sr=1-1&keywords=disclaimer

The Unwanteds: Island of Silence- Lisa McMann

| cgkinnett

Where many an author goes wrong in a series is not being able to find the perfect balance of recap and new details, Island of Silence by Lisa McMann however does this seamlessly. The second book in The Unwanteds series welcomes back readers without heavily burdening them with synopsis while at the same time clues in readers that maybe didn’t read book one (though shame on you for skipping around).

Book two picks up very soon after the events of of book one and we are shown almost immediately how those from Quill are reacting to the information that all the Unwanteds are alive and well; some take to this new world easily while others wish that everyone had in fact been thrown in to the lake of burning oil. It is really interesting to see how these new revelations have defined with even greater detail the class system that has been in effect for all 50 years of Quills existence. Those who had been Necessary had been relegated to doing tasks such as farming all the food and picking up everyone’s trash for years and once Mr. Today extended an open invitation for anyone and everyone to come to Artimè, who could blame them for shirking their duties. However if one were a part of the Wanteds, the upper class and highest echelon, one is at a loss as to why these people would desert Quill. This, coupled with the death of his idol and leader Justine, is what drives Aaron Stowe to begin plotting and scheming and soon a war begins.

As if his evil twins’ dastardly plans weren’t enough to worry about, Alex has been chosen by Mr. Today to begin learning how to take over for the mage should he want to go on something called a “vacation”  or “retire.” There is so much to keeping Artimè ticking that Alex is unsure of his ability to lead. Additionally, two children appear one day on the beach having floated up on a dilapidated raft. As if this weren’t strange enough, the two have wire collars with thorns embeded around their necks, rendering them silent.

The story begins to be more complex in Island of Silence in regards to exposition and new plot points, weird feelings emerge (like how Samheed keeps looking strangely at Meg) and alliances are tested. McMann’s second tale in The Unwanteds saga is rich in scenery as we explore new places like the Island of Silence and takes us deep into the emotions of our main characters. It is especially interesting to see how Alex and Aaron mirror each other in their opposition. One is so entirely good and the other [seems to be so] entirely evil. I think there is more than meets the eye to these two and I can’t wait to see how they continue to shape the courses of Artimè and Quill. As their powers grow and their leadership roles increase, is one island big enough for the two?

I give this tale five out of five books for rarely is a sequel even more compelling than the first.