I Hate Killers

Cain by Henri Vidal, Paris

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga
New York : Little, Brown, 2012
359 p. ; 22 cm.

"Serial murder is a relatively rare event, estimated to comprise less than one percent of all murders committed in any given year. However, there is a macabre interest in the topic that far exceeds its scope and has generated countless articles, books, and movies." -- FBI Serial Murder Report, 2005

I guess I'm just a bit of a contrarian when it comes to many things that popular culture offers as entertainment, and the popularity of serial killer entertainment (e.g. Silence of the Lambs or Dexter)  is one of them.  It's a form of entertainment that leaves me feeling manipulated and repulsed - and that's how I felt after reading Lyga's serial killer novel - I Hunt Killers. I know this puts me in a minority, because the novel is very popular.

The novel attempts to be a compassionate and complex thriller whose hero is Jasper, a 17 year old raised by his now imprisoned father who is a sadistic, methodical, diabolical, and sickeningly brilliant serial killer.  The father exposed young Jasper to all the gruesome details of his crimes in the hopes of turning him into a killer like himself.  And so the conflict - as Jasper becomes a man, will he be a normal person, or is he fated to become like his father - a remorseless pathological killer?  And this conflict plays out in Lyga's novel with the onset of a series of gruesome murders in the town where Jasper lives and grew up.  Jasper - wrestling with his tortured history and trying figuring out his identity - is determined to use his intimate knowledge of serial killers to help the police catch and stop the murderer.

The novel features many of the tropes of serial killer entertainment - some gruesome gore, a riveting battle of wits, an evil genius of a serial killer (ala Hannibal Lecter), and heart stopping danger and action.  Oh, and the novel ends with a plot twist that sets up the novel for it's sure sequence, Game, which we also have.

I think one of the things that saddened me about this novel, is that Lyga is really a very talented writer.  His plotting and dialog are very effective - and he is able to skillfully convey the ambiguity of self that confronts anyone trying to come to terms with his or her identity.  But it ultimately feels sleazy and voyeuristic to me.

I do understand that people are fascinated with gruesome crimes and events - I'm not immune to it myself.  There is a certain thrill of terror and relief to knowing what horrible things could and have happened - and yet that one has so far avoided.  The world is definitely filled with horror and terror, but for myself, I'd rather read true histories or case studies, and wrestle with my own existential questions of "Why?" - instead of be taken though a fictional - supposedly entertaining - and at times manipulative account of murderers and murders.

Pulses, Waves, Plagues and War

Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1887.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
New York, NY : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2013.
457 p. ; 23 cm. 

I loved Yancey's Monstrumologist and his wonderful follow-up, The Curse of the Wendigo - but his latest book, The 5th Wave wasn't as satisfying to me.  The writing is really good, the plotting is interesting and engaging, and there is a lot of great action and thrills, but ,ultimately, for me there is just too much that strains credibility.  What I liked about his previous two books was their specificity - a few characters involved in very circumscribed actions.  The 5th Wave on the other hand involves the global (and I mean global) eradication of humanity by a super-advanced invasion force of aliens - but it just happens that a few characters who knew each other before the invasion not only survive the extermination, but successfully resist and sabotage it.  I also just found the most important plot twist involving one of the main characters to be completely unbelievable.  Either he would have never changed his behavior - or the aliens would have never been so stupid as to use such characters in their operations to rid the earth of humans.

But, these incredulities aside, there is a lot to enjoy in this novel.  The waves of destruction (thus the title) by the aliens are frightening and exciting to the imagination: a massive EMP (electromagnetic pulse), induced tectonic upheaval creating worldwide megatsunamis, a very lethal viral pandemic, and sleeper human/alien killers, and... well, you get the picture.

Yancey also creates a strong and interesting female hero - something that is refreshingly more common these days (think Hunger Games, Slated and Divergent).  In spite of not enjoying the book as much as I thought I might, I'd still give it high marks, and not hesitate recommending it to students looking for something exciting and interesting to read.

Goodbye Cruel World

from Scotese.com - an awesome source of paleomaps from earth history

The Great Extinctions by Norman MacLeod
Buffalo, N.Y. : Firefly Books, 2013
208 p. : ill. (chiefly col.), col. maps ; 26 cm.

Confession: I love books about deep time, especially about the earth.  This is a book that satisfied my hankering for science books about the very, very distant past.  And regarding the deep past, what could be more interesting than those rare great extinctions in which enough conditions - sea levels, climate, extraterrestrial impact, volcanism - occurred together that a dramatic percentage of all life on earth was wiped out?  The topic is even more compelling when one thinks about the possibility that we are living at the start of the 6th great extinction event.  However, I'd have to give this book a mixed - though mostly positive - review.

The strengths of this book are it's organization - each great extinction event is presented chronologically and maps, charts, and knowns and unknowns about the event are presented in much the same order.  I also really appreciated the number of illustations and maps in the book.  The author is able to cover a lot of territory in the book and make a lot of it accessible.  A lot, but not all of it - and that is my main critique of this book for a high school collection.  There are times where the data and explanations are very complex and difficult to follow and will turn off and frustrate the general reader.  Therefore I would recommend this book to students researching the science of the great extinctions or students who are avid science readers; the general reader is probably going to get bogged down long before finishing this book.

Nice, Little (Book) - Big, Terrible (Wars)

From Wikipedia

The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction by Mike Rapport
Oxford, U.K. : Oxford University Press, 2013
xiv, 149 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.

I'm not sure what recently prompted me to want to read European history.  Perhaps it's the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI - which will be commemorated this August - perhaps it's seeing books on the shelf about Napoleon, or perhaps it's just my wanting to get away from fiction for a while.  Whatever the reason, I recently picked up a book I've been wanting to read for some time: Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower (about Europe in the decades just before WWI).  Starting it made me realize that I wanted to know more about the period before Tuchman's book, so I picked up Mike Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolution.  Guess what? Yes, I needed some background for 1848 and so I settled on this fine, little introduction to the Napoleonic Wars.

I love these "Very Short Introduction" books from Oxford.  They cover a wide variety of subjects and are written for lay readers by experts in the field being covered, and are short and concise.  As you can see, this one has just 149 pages, and the book is small enough that Napoleon could have it tucked under his buttons in the David portrait above - and we'd never know it!

Joking aside, the book was really eye-opening to the scale of carnage and destruction that the French Revolutionary and subsequent Napoleonic Wars brought to Europe (and the world).  I had always thought that WW I was the first real mass-carnage, total war to take place in Europe - but Rapport makes the case that the percentages and scale of casualties (along with the global nature of the wars) puts the Napoleonic Wars in the same league as WWI.

I also appreciated his attempt to show the conflicting views on the legacies (good and bad) of Napoleon's expansionism - especially in light of the extreme reactionary responses to his aggression.

Now I'm ready to tackle 1848 and then, hopefully, to take on The Proud Tower.

Alt Control Delete

Slated by Teri Terry
New York, N.Y. : Speak, 2013.
346 p. ; 21 cm.

I found Slated to be a good, but not great read.  I love the plot set-up:  in a near-future authoritarian state young criminals are not executed for serious crimes, but are "slated" - they have there memories wiped and are implanted with a surveillance/control wrist monitor (Levo) that physically requires them to moderate their mood - and will short-circuit their central nervous system if they become extremely angry/violent or extremely depressed.  Upon being released from hospital training/confinement after being slated, the offender is place with an adoptive family. 

But things in Slateland are not what they seem.  Feared secret police / paramilitary agents called the Lorders keep a watchful eye on citizens and it seems likely that not all slated individuals were guilty of any crimes at all.

The story deals with main character Kyla who has a few abnormalities for a slated parolee - she has dream/memories and her Levo doesn't keep her from becoming angry or violent.  In the course of the novel she begins to question her identity and status, all the while falling in love with another slated individual, Ben.

There are some exciting plot developments, and thrilling episodes where Kyla and others are in serious danger, but ultimately the publishing demands for a trilogy, force the plot to turn on too many improbables and the novel ends without any serious resolution.

I think this could have been a great young adult novel - with hints of V for Vendetta and the Handmaid's Tale (the Lorders reminded me a lot of Atwood's "Eyes") - if it had been limited to one volume with tight editing.  But that, of course, would have limited the money-making potential for the publisher, and so instead of a satisfying novel, we are left with a third of a novel - a good third, but still a third.