Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

I got acquainted with Gillian Flynn through her short story in last year's cross-genre anthology, Rogues. What I liked about the story was it's pot-boiler tension and especially the cynical, acidic voice of the character. I had also watched the film adaptation of her best-selling Gone Girl not too long before that so I decided the time would come when I checked her out. 

Dark Places is first and foremost a mystery about a woman who is investigating the cult-related murders of her family 25 years after the fact in order to find some sort of inner peace. All of the conventional mystery tropes and techniques are there, the subtle clues, the red herrings, the recap of evidence, the consideration and rejection of various suspects...To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of mysteries, as I can always see the tick-tick-ticking of the clockworks behind the plot and usually have it figured out before the character's have. This was no exception, although I must say I had two theories going here and both were only half right. 

But, man, this book is so much more than a mystery. This little book packs a lot in: the psychological aftereffects of trauma, the little lies humans constantly tell themselves to feel better, the sinister underside to the cutesy way adults treat children, sibling rivaly, the plight of desperately poor underclass drowning in debt, the 1980s farm crisis, the meanspiritedness of small towns, the exploitation of (some but not all)crimes by the media, devil worship, underage sex, the path of psychological carnage crimes and lies can wreak...All of it deftly, unpreachily, matter-of-factly part of the story and the characters themselves. 

It blew me the fuck away.

The story is mostly set in rural Kansas in the mid 1980s, in the plains north of the Flint Hills and in modern day Kansas City Missouri. Having grown up poor in semi-rural Missouri myself at the time(I'm almost exactly the same age as the imprisoned Ben Day in the story) and spending time in various places in the Midwest, she nails it. The run down feeling of urban decay. The sick feeling of envy and sadness felt by the children of the have nots. The headachey banality of evil that grows out of oppressive boredom. The hypersensitivity of misfit teenagers and the fight they make for their souls in a bleak landscape. The utterly empty and eternal loneliness of the prairie in winter that makes you feel small, effect-less, mean and meaningless. 

The prose is simple and easy to read. It reminded me a little of Chuck Palahniuk, though less minimalistic: the depressed, cynical, ever-angry voice of the protagonist had a lot to do with that. There are passages and twists of wording that are just sublime--simple, but elegant. IN a twisted sort of way.

And if the setting seems a little overly grey and depressing, run down and broken... it's worth noting that all of the point of view characters are suffering from rather real and severe depression. Things really do look like that there sometimes. All dull and headachey. Flynn has a journalistic eye that paints pictures that I've seldom seen painted before anywhere but my own memories.

It actually brought back a lot of memories. 

The characters feel incredibly real to me: if they don't leap off the page, it's mainly because they are too tired and depressed to leap. But they do get off the page and into your skull. 

The teenage boy in me identified strongly with the forlorn Ben Day(although at least he gets laid. Unlike the teenage boy in me.) But the main character, Libby Day is the real achievement here. Hateful, full of anger, dishonest, conniving...somehow, by some sort of magic, Gillian Flynn makes the unlikable sympathetic and likable. It all makes sense. How could Libby be any other than what she is?

The book is not for everybody. It's almost relentless in it's darkness. There's a lot of really disturbing themes. The climactic scenes are breathtakingly violent and really quite horrible. I like that kind of thing but a lot of people don't. Other people have complained about foul language.(that never bothers me.
But it's a breeze to read(I did it in about 2 days) and it's going to stick with me afor a long time. Yeah, if you're not squeamish...read it.

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb

In this current age of grim, morally grey fantasy, Assassin's Apprentice seemed a bit old-fashioned and 'clean'on first impression. There seemed a lot of familiar fantasy cliches and tropes; it had hints of Earthsea, I thought, although without the keen, crystal atmosphere of LeGuin's series... It held my interest well enough but it seemed slow...as I continued to read though, it started grabbing me more and more until I really started enjoying it.

By the half-way point I was hooked and found myself staying up a little later each night to find out what happened next. There is quite a bit happening under the surface here, I think.

Having said that parts of it is a bit predictable: I don't like to think I'm smarter than the narrator(and main character) but I had certain things figured out long before he did...and I'm not sure I was meant to. But just a bit. There were also a lot of things that surprised me(usually the failure of a familiar trope to materialize as you think it's going to.)


I miss the really fine details of really great world-building, but part of that is probably the first person voice used. This is a massive series of series, so I have the feeling that I"m just scratching the surface of it...and I am intrigued about how political fortunes and situations are going to develop in this long tale. I'd probably give this first story 3 and half stars if that were possible, so I'm rounding up, here, because I expect that this fine story is just the beginning: the story is going to widen and broaden and hook me in further as I read...I'm looking forward to it! Recommended to fans of traditional fantasy.

Cops

I was taking Dad to the airport in Prague yesterday morning. When we pulled onto the highway out of Zlin I realized that I hadn't bought a highway sticker yet.

"Shit,"; I said. "I haven't bought a highway sticker yet."
Dad said: "Are you gonna go back?"
I said: !No, it's only 4.30. What I'll do is I'll pull over at the first gas station and buy one. God. Do they sell highway stickers on the highway itself? Maybe they don't. Maybe they only sell them before you get to the highway?"
Dad: "Surely they do."
Me: "WEll I hope so. I guess I'll find out."
an hour later, I'm still driving, having come across only one gas station, and that was closed down and made into a rest area sans toilet. I see a gas station in the distance. I pull off the exit and over. It's 5.30. Several cars are parked at some of the tanks, including a big police van--the type they use when they are out on the highway nabbing people for not having highway stickers. The cops themselves are inside.

Me: "Damn, there's the cops. Good thing I stopped. I guess I'll get some gas here. "
I get the gas and Dad goes into pay for it. I go in and buy a ten day highway sticker. Then I go downstairs to take a much needed leak. I return to my car. Dad puts the sticker on. The cops are gone. I pull away to leave and behind the gas station, there they ARE!!! Standing outside their van. They immediately JUMP in front of me holding out their little stop sign. "Shit, they're pulling me over", I say. (Probably unnecessarily.)

The cop walks over and inspects my new-bought sticker.

He walks to the window and demands all my documents: driver's license, proof of insurance, title of the car, Dad's passport, my passport. Then he asks me if I have some Czech ID because I guess he doesn't want to accept my American passport as ID or something. I show him my green trvaly pobyt book. He looks at it and says 'Do you live in Horni Jasenka, Vsetin?'
"yes'. I say.
"Hmmm...that is very good, very good. I know Vsetin well, very well." (All of this is in Czech, of course. He has a weird accent for me, a Brno accent, I guess, since we're only about 20 kms from Brno; so he's' a little hard to understand, and I start feeling like he's a Nazi toying with me. I'm so nervous I'm shaking.

Then he says: "You need a sticker to drive on a highway. You drove here without a sticker didnt' you? And you just bought that sticker here."

I reply, doing my best Jon Lovitz pathological liar impression: "actually....I didn't drive on the highway....yeeehhhh..that's the ticket...noooooo...nooooo....I drove the other way! Yeeeahhhh.... "(thinking, he was inside the gas station--he'll never prove that I didn't come some other way! Genius!! Got him on a technicality I do!)

He looks at me and says: "Well, that's very interesting because there is only one way to get to this gas station; and that's from the highway. It's the only road here. Now, do you still assert that you didn't take the highway here?"

I shake my head, thinking, damn, I need a lawyer or something . He repeats the question. I shake my head again.

Then he says: "Well, that will be 5000 crowns." This happens to be exactly how much I put in my wallet when I left. Plus I have some change. I probably have 5700 crowns in my wallet.

Me: (gasping) "I don't have 5000 crowns on me!" (I give my most distressed, now what the hell am I going to do, am I going to be arrested? look.

He wanders around and looks at the sticker again, inspecting it very closely. I figure(now) that he realizes he's shit out of luck: I don't have 5000 kc and he can't really fine me for not having a sticker when I have one now, can he?

He comes back. And says. "WEll, this time I'll let you go. Because I know Vsetin well. You are lucky you are from Vsetin. But next time you drive on the highway without a sticker, I'll take your license. Because that will mean that you don't know the law." I refrain from pointing out how illogical this statement is.

Me: "he's letting me go."

I drive off, shaking in fear for about the next 10 kms.

1356 by Bernard Cornwell (version 2.0)

I previously wrote a review, came back to edit and accidentally deleted it!

This book, the fourth of Cornwell's series focusing on the fictional archer Thomas of Hookton during the Hundred Years' war is a bit of a disappointment for me.

The familiar elements of the formula are very much in place, but they seem a bit hackneyed here, as if he's just going through the motions. Previously the formula didn't bother me because it's why I read in the first place, but this time it bothered me.

The previously three novels had wrapped up the story pretty well and the creation of another mythical Christian relic for Thomas to pursue just felt lame, as if Cornwell was absolutely unable to think of anything for Thomas to do but the quest after holy relics.

Another problem is the story felt somehow truncated, as if Cornwell had set himself a deadline(he does seem to write a book a year so it's possible) and, running out of time, just sort of abruptly ended the various threads of plot in the inevetible Big Battle at the End that all of his stories have(battle scenes excellent as always). Even the death of what had been a major character in all three books seemed abrupt and out-of-nowhere.

I did like the fact that Thomas seemed to have acquired a bit more depth with age and family; and the new character, the virgin knight Roland d'something-or-other was a bit more interesting than the rest of the series' panoply of shallow tournament champions. 

Overall, the whole story seemed tired and worn out. I'm still looking forward to the next installment of the Saxon Stories(still, along with the '90's sublime Warlord Chronicles Cornwell's best work) in October, and I'll probably get around to reading other books of his, but, truth be told, I've read a lot of his books in the last year or so(no less, than 10!) and this decidedly mediocre one has convinced me to take a break.