John Ronald's Dragons (Caroline McAlister)

John Ronald's Dragons: The Story of J. R. R. Tolkien
Caroline McAlister, illustrations by Eliza Wheeler
Roaring Book Press
Nonfiction, YA Picture Book
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Since childhood, John loved dragons, even if his world was devoid of them... until he grew up and discovered a dragon of his very own, in a story about a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins.

REVIEW: This picture book explores the life and influences of famed author J. R. R. Tolkien, who would create one of literature's great wyrms with Smaug. Bright illustrations hint at magic and wonder even in mundane settings; in the muddy trenches of war, for instance, tanks can be seen spouting flames like dragons. At the end of the book is a brief section of bonus material, discussing Tolkien's life and his influences, plus some notes from the artist; many details in the images have extra meaning. It's an enjoyable and informative read about an iconic author.

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Teacup (Rebecca Young)

Teacup
Rebecca Young, illustrations by Matt Ottley
Dial Books
Fiction, YA Picture Book
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: A lone boy sets out on a voyage across a wide sea, with little more than a teacup full of earth from his lost home.

REVIEW: This book is simply beautiful. The brief prose evokes a sense of wonder and of loss. Ottley's gorgeous paintings create a vast and strange world, a voyage through fear and hope and imagination, as a boy faces the unknown future after an unnamed tragedy tore him from everything he knew. It's a book that speaks to anyone of any age who has experienced loss and turmoil, who has ever been alone with memories and fear of what lies ahead.

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Just Good Friends (Rosalind James)

Just Good Friends
(The Escape to New Zealand series, Book 2)
Rosalind James
Rosalind James, publisher
Fiction, Romance
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: California girl Kate Lamonica didn't used to take risks, but stalker Paul forced her out of her comfort zone. Now she's in New Zealand, half a world away from her old friends and old life; it's the only way to stay off Paul's radar until he gives up. It's not all bad. Her new job, accountant for a rugby team, is challenging, and the country is gorgeous and friendly. If only she could say the same for the people - or, rather, one man in particular...
Koti James dislikes the American Kate the moment he lays eyes on her - and she rejects his usual lady-melting smile. She's not his type, anyway; he usually goes for the long-legged blondes, not the short, dark ones, plus she's clearly got a chip as big as the country on her shoulder. As a star athlete with supermodel looks, he's never short on female companionship, and he certainly doesn't need a proper relationship... so why is she such a persistent thorn in his side?
Their mutual dislike comes to a head with an argument that leads to a bet: for six weeks they'll play at being friends, and nothing more. Given their animosity, they both figure the bet's as good as won - it'll be the other one who breaks and makes a pass, or walks away altogether. But irritation soon gives way to something much stronger, and more dangerous.

REVIEW: It was on sale, and I needed a palate-cleanser after a disappointing read. Unfortunately, this book turned out to be something of a letdown, as well. Neither Koti nor Kate (or any of the rest of the cast) ever come alive as people beyond the page. They spend much of the book immersed in long, wordy conversations that spell things out unnaturally. At several points, I almost saw the author standing right behind the characters, making them talk out their relationship rather than experience it. There are even multiple conversations that seem intended to let me, as a reader, know that the characters all understand the difference between stalking-level possessiveness and the normal urge to protect a loved one in a healthy relationship, not to mention the difference between a dangerous control freak and consensual dominance/submission in the bedroom. I'm a big enough girl to figure that out, and I prefer doing so from context, not with characters deliberately leading me along like a child. The plot itself feels thin, with too little going on in either characters' lives (or, at least, too little going on that makes it into the book; comments are made, particularly about Koti re-dedicating himself to rugby practice to earn a coveted national slot, but the reader doesn't see any of that, so it's just more talk), and the little we do see of them sets up elements that never come into play. Things unfold about as one might expect from the blurb, with the odd sidetrack into Maori culture, New Zealand history, and more than one steamy moment. The telegraphed climax offers no surprises, either. While it was nice "seeing" New Zealand, because it's a culture I don't see or read a lot about, I wish I'd had more interesting tour guides than these two, not to mention an itinerary with a few more twists and turns.

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Just One Damned Thing After Another (Jodi Taylor)

Just One Damned Thing After Another
(The Chronicles of St. Mary's, Book 1)
Jodi Taylor
Accent Press
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Short spitfire historian Madeline Maxwell lands the job of a lifetime at St. Mary's, an ostensibly ordinary historical research team performing ostensibly ordinary historical research... only St. Mary's has a secret edge over the competition. They use time travel to observe events and answer questions about the past - and, of course, get themselves into trouble, because History can be a bit of a bugger when a historian pokes his or her nose into the wrong corner. As Maxwell settles into her new life among the eccentric staff, she finds herself tangled up in something bigger. Because St. Mary's isn't the only one traveling through time - only the other guys are turning history into a cash cow, and anyone who stands between them and profit will end up "history" themselves.

REVIEW: This was supposed to be a fun, rollicking time travel story, a crazy seat-of-the-pants adventure. Unfortunately, I found it rarely rose above the vaguely-amusing humor line. The main problem is the narrator, Madeline Maxwell. She thinks she's spunky and clever and eternally amusing, but then she also thinks she's smart - only she's impossibly easy to distract, even from her own story, wandering off on distracting tangents that aren't nearly as funny as she seems to think. Because she's dancing and capering and winking in my face most of the time, often with hefty smatterings of English slang and crudity, it becomes very hard to notice the story or peripheral characters around her. What I did see leaned heavily on genre expectations, consistently reaching for the low-hanging-fruit options and ideas. For instance, there's the obligatory (and illogical, given that diseases are already an issue with time travel in human times, let alone beyond recorded history, but I digress) trip to the Cretaceous. Every single animal they see is one of the standards, readily identified from a fossil record that paints a spotty, at best, picture of life in that era. No insects, no mammals, no unexpected wonders that skipped fossilization: nothing but the "money shot" dinos like Tyrannosaurus Rex and giant sauropods and hadrosaurs and such. The descriptions were nice, but what a missed opportunity.
Much of the book felt like that, actually: missed opportunities for character depth (Maxwell's been traumatized by a past including sexual abuse - the ultimate low-hanging-fruit for creating a woman with a "troubled" past), missed opportunities for historical secrets, missed opportunities for playing with the time travel gimmick and technology... The author was too in love with Maxwell's voice and general silliness to even try reaching deeper, despite some peripheral hints that her England is either an alternate reality or a not-so-distant future, possibly both. Pretty much everyone is either a stereotype or just a random name that gets mentioned now and again, the two qualities not being mutually exclusive: lots of character names are chucked at the reader, only rarely appearing often enough or with enough of a hook for the reader to remember, let alone care about, them. The baddies are obvious (because they're presented as questionable or outright bad, but Maxwell then gets distracted and I, as the reader, was apparently supposed to forget all that and be shocked when said characters turned out to be just what they appeared.)
As for the story... things happen, I grant that, and as I mentioned some of the descriptions could be nice, but I couldn't care about much of it because I got so very tired of Maxwell mugging for the narrative camera. Then the ending drops some random and downright pointless, out-of-the-blue twists that are supposed to induce me to follow along in Book 2. The hook failed to find purchase, so this reader swims away, disappointed that the shiny lure didn't have a juicier treat attached.

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The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu)

The Three-Body Problem
(The Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, Book 1)
Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
Tor
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: During the bloody height of China's Cultural Revolution, Ye Wenjie watched her professor father beaten to death by a fanatical mob. His crime: teaching physics connected to Western thinkers, physics that opposed the "right" ideology of the revolution. As she witnesses more of humanity's hateful, unthinking, destructive behavior during "rehabilitation" labor, she reaches the conclusion that people will only destroy the planet and themselves, a flaw in their very nature for which she sees no cure. Then she is tapped to become part of a secret government project... and everything changes.
Decades later, as a rash of tragedies and suicides sweeps through Earth's scientific elite, nanotechnologist Wang Miao is recruited to help infiltrate their exclusive association to uncover the culprit, if indeed there is one. The infiltration connects Wang to a peculiar VR game called Three-Body, about a distant planet plagued by instability and a civilization seeking a less chaotic homeworld... and also connects him with an aging professor: Ye Wenjie.

REVIEW: This award-winning book, first in a trilogy, is a Chinese best-seller, recently translated for American audiences. The storytelling style bears a certain foreign flavor, not simply with the setting. Mostly, though, this is an Idea book. The characters tend to fade in and out of focus, often existing to talk through or experience high-level physics concepts: the unpredictability of three bodies orbiting each other (well, four, if you count the unfortunate planet caught between three suns, though its comparative mass makes it mostly an insignificant victim), the potential size and power of a single proton if considered as an eleven-dimensional structure, quantum states, and so forth. My eyes glazed during long paragraphs of such talk. I found it somewhat more interesting when dealing with the consequences of those concepts, and the characters, though even the latter could sometimes endure long, dull stretches of minimal plot progression. A few of the themes, particularly the flaw in the common notion that technological development accompanies moral development (not to mention the notion that an outside culture/species will have nothing but Answers to the Problems plaguing a given populace), came across as a little heavy-handed, particularly as the characters once again tended to be constructs to serve those messages. Still, I found myself intrigued, and the Ideas, though far over my head, were shiny to look at. The ending falls somewhere between chilling and grimly hopeful, setting up a trilogy that I doubt I'll follow. All in all, while the style and story aren't my cup of cocoa, The Three-Body Problem should please any reader who likes their science fiction with an extra dose of hard science.
(Personally, the parts I found most interesting were about the Revolution; from the outside, it's easy to see other cultures as monolithic, their histories relatively straightforward, but here the many inner conflicts and schisms come to light. I also couldn't help seeing disturbing parallels between attacks on scientists by political extremists and recent efforts to undermine science and logic by my own Earth-based government... but I digress.)

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