Reviews and Comments

I'm privileged enough to have never been directly affected by the American prison system, so this was always going to be a pretty informative book for me. But I'm still surprised by just how concise and sweeping such a short book managed to be; damn near every sub-topic I was thinking about was addressed before the end.

This is a well-researched dive into a facet of life that's at the back of everyone's mind but also one we don't like to think about. Early on there's a quote referenced: "If you've seen one prison... you've seen one prison." Jumping around to multiple real-world locations was an effective way to hammer that down, showing the differences in how each place deals with race, college programs for inmates, female inmates, how thy handled COVID lockdowns, and how prisons prepare (or rather how they don't prepare) people for their eventual release. There are even separate chapters focusing on the staff at these facilities, and how prisons in other countries compare.

I was expecting more suggestions or proposals for future goals of prison reform, but this read more like a journalistic exposé rather than a persuasive essay. Regardless, this series/publisher continues to be a great source for polished examinations of niche contemporary subjects, but this stands out as one of the better ones I've read.

I appreciate this kind of pared-back science fiction that doesn't bend over backwards creating super-complex worlds with aliens and centuries of history and impossible physics. Instead we have a simpler premise that still offers a lot to work with: A comet passes through the solar system and misses Earth, but a few months later our orbit passes through the debris field it left behind, resulting in a massive meteor shower. This book follows what happens in the town where it hit the worst, in rural Minnesota.

This is one of those books where the point of view bounces between multiple characters, but we keep coming back to a core three who are completely ignorant of each other in the beginning but end up getting tangled together by the plot. I usually associate that kind of complexity with much longer books, but this was an efficient and tight little novel that accomplished it in about 300 pages. It's interesting because the author is clearly talented - there were a few scenes that absolutely held my attention - but at times it also felt a little clumsy. I'm thinking about peripheral characters that the reader was clearly not meant to sympathize with being portrayed as comically evil, almost outside the realm of credulity. Besides these occasional eye-roll moments, there's some solid writing here.

Looking ahead, it seems the next two books in this "trilogy" are set in the same time frame, just in different parts of the world with completely different characters. That alone is intriguing to me, signaling that there are more stories to be told about this cosmic event beyond these characters in this book, and I'm inclined to agree. I'll likely pick them up at some point.

This was a book club read and my sixth go-around with this author. Someone else in my club whose also read a lot of Klune's stuff pointed out the plot/structural similarities with his other books, and damned if I'm not gonna notice the Klune formula moving forward. But hey, he's doing something right if he keeps getting published!

This was a weird one for me because looking back at it as a whole, the first things that come to mind are the shortcomings: I wish the central romance felt a little more earned, I wish the weird/sci-fi/alien parts were leaned into more, I wish the 90's setting was better utilized, I wish the ending was more tragic (a common gripe that my book club mocks me for; I just want everything to be Hamlet-levels of tragedy). But it wasn't an overall bad book and I don't regret my time with it.

However there is a very blatant and blunt Heaven's Gate reference that was so on-the-nose that it almost felt disrespectful to me? Like, that was an actual, real-world mass suicide event; seemed weird to me to fictionalize a nearly identical version of it in an otherwise feel-good story. I don't know, just rubbed me the wrong way, enough so that I felt like mentioning it here.

I continue to not enjoy child characters in fiction, but that's subjective and nothing new. Still, I could see myself recommending this to certain people, and it's not something I would intentionally steer others away from.

I was lured in with the promise of a fun, accessible pop-psychology spin on economics in our daily lives. Instead I got an oddly masturbatory criminology lecture hyperfocused on poor black people and everything they do wrong.

Damn near every weekend I find myself in a thrift store and this book specifically appears in droves pretty much everywhere I go. The frequency with which I see this book finally won me over and I gave it a chance. Originally published in 2005, I was curious what a book about economics right on the verge of the 2008 financial crisis would look like. Turns out I'm still wondering what that book would look like, because this one wasn't about economics at all!

There are discussions on "how is the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real-estate agents?," how people become crack dealers, and whether or not children given stereotypical black names will have a harder time succeeding financially. The book admits up front that there is no central unifying theme of the chapters that read like completely separate essays, so at least that was honest. But before each of these chapters are snippets from various newspaper articles (again, this is a fairly dated book by now) blowing air up the author's ass about how he isn't afraid to speak his mind, etc., etc. that I could've done without.

I don't know. Not what I was expecting going into it and what it ended up being wasn't compelling enough to make for an enjoyable read.

I wanna say this was a swing and a miss, but it felt more like watching someone who had no business being there at all walk up to bat - without a bat - and get nailed in the face with a speedball. Genuinely don't understand what message I'm supposed to walk away from this story with.

Sometimes a book flounders because it's trying to do too many things at once, and gets pulled in too many directions. Not the case here. Instead we have a singular focus on a newly-widowed mother with intense survivor guilt trying and failing to reconnect with her brooding teenage son by honoring her dead husband's wish to spend Christmas in a cabin in the woods. Which on its own sounds like a strong enough prompt to work with, but it doesn't go anywhere. She remains a high-strung and irrational victim of the same repeating flashback throughout the story and the only action she decides to take during the climax (if you could even call it that) doesn't result in any character changes. She was created to suffer and on that front I suppose she was a resounding success.

Maybe this was actually a super clever postmodern rejection of the classic three-act story format that went clean over my head, but somehow I doubt that. Despite the lack of spelling and grammatical errors this managed to feel like something less than a first draft, like a one-half draft; a concept of a story.

I'm trying to make an effort this year to read more trilogies and book series, which I clearly need more practice with because I was initially confused why this book left so many plot points unresolved. You know, the first book in a trilogy that has two other full-length novels coming after it that continue the same story? Yeah, that one.

As far as hard fantasy with elaborate settings go, this felt very accessible. Sure the worldbuilding was intriguing and logical enough to make me want to buy into it, but the narration style was oddly conversational and didn't feel like it was being dictated to me from some detached entity telling me about events secondhand. This also had one of the best-executed uses of second-person narration that will stick with me for a long while.

And because I'm coming to this series very late (coming up on 10 years since first publication) I already had the central 'twist' about our three protagonists spoiled before beginning the book, but I feel I would've deduced it pretty early on. Which isn't to say it wasn't done well, in fact, it made for an interesting exercise to juggle three plot lines simultaneously. I'm excited to see if and how the sequels will attempt something similarly complex.

Also I'm now convinced that every story would be improved by adding a bisexual pirate captain that no one can resist. Didn't know I wanted it until I got that here.

A promising first entry that I definitely will be following up on.

As a whole this was a serviceable thriller, but the execution of the climactic twist did a lot of heavy lifting to pull up the preceding three quarters.

At risk of sounding tone deaf or insensitive, I think I'm just too much of a man to enjoy this kind of Chick Lit murder mystery? The protagonist exhibits a debilitating fear of men (both strangers and men she knows) to the point that it almost read as parody; multiple times I felt like I was following a character who needed professional help, which was ironic considering she was a psychologist! Which isn't to say that women aren't valid for fearing domestic violence or human trafficking, but I've just seen this flavor of paranoia done better before (The Final Girl Support Group comes to mind).

This book also has a hyper-local focus on Louisiana, and Baton Rouge specifically. Just so happened that I married into a NOLA family, and my husband got a real tickle when I mentioned the protagonist's childhood involving live crawfish races, Spanish moss wigs, getting snow cone syrup all over your face, and throwing apples to alligators from an overpass. If nothing else, this book nailed the localisms.