Outside A Dog

Ender In Exile is billed as a ‘direct sequel’ to Ender’s Game.  Never mind that it was written 25 years after EG.  Card has revisited the EG world numerous times since the original, and it almost seems as if Ender is nothing but a cash cow for him at this point.  Not many authors can revisit a world 25 years later and write a direct sequel that measures up.  Card is not an exception here.

Many of the things that so endeared me to Ender’s Game are gone here.  In the original, Card did a great job of making you empathize with Ender.  Other kids viewed him as smug, arrogant and distant, but the reader viewed him as conflicted and emotionally tortured.  In this book, Ender comes off as exactly what some of the characters view him as — an arrogant, smart-assed brat.  I found myself enjoying the beatdown that Ender receives at the hands of one of the characters.

The pacing is also off.  The first entire arc of the story takes up about 75% of the book, wraps up in a completely unsatisfying manner, and then jumps into another arc that spans a chapter or two.  The main antagonist of this second arc does a complete 180 in his thinking in about a paragraph, which given his huge intelligence, isn’t entirely inconceivable, but still comes off as annoying and unbelievable.  Ender’s sister Valentine, who is a major part of his life and psyche, is almost non-existent in the book, even though she is present the entire time.

If you’re a fan of the Ender series, then I’d give this book a read for completeness’ sake, but it’s nowhere near the caliber of the original, or even Speaker for the Dead, Card’s second book in the Ender universe.

This weekend, I also finished Dream When You’re Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg, a story about three sisters doing their best to survive being left at home during World War II. Kitty, the eldest, writes to her steady boyfriend, Julian, while her sister Louise writes to Julian’s best friend Michael, who proposed just as he was leaving for the Army. And their youngest sister, Tish, writes to just about every gentleman she meets at the USO dances she loves. Kitty struggles with both her devotion to Julian and her decision to work at a defense job helping to assemble airplanes as everyone at home struggles to support the war effort.

I have to say, I really enjoyed this one. It’s a light read, but it’s a glimpse into what wartime looked like for those who weren’t on the front lines. All of Kitty’s family members are affected in their own way, and the stories told here remind me of those I’ve heard in person about coping during the war. Kitty is an independent little thing, and her struggles to find herself and determine how she wants to live her life really strike home with me.

I have to mention the ending, though: you’re either going to love it or hate it, because it comes out of nowhere. It definitely didn’t register the first time through, and I had to go back and re-read the last two chapters several times before it sunk in. Having read other reviews, I think I’m in the minority in my appreciation of the ending — some have mentioned that they believe the last two chapters are out of character for Kitty, but I do think it follows what Berg intended.

Over the weekend I read Zoe Lucky and the Green Gables Mystery by M. Carol Coffey. It’s a sweet little young adult story in which our heroine, Zoe, pieces together the clues in order to catch a persistent — and dangerous — burglar.

Zoe and her mom have moved to Pittsburgh after Zoe’s father, a police officer, was killed in a bank robbery. The apartment building she and her mom share with an African Studies professor at the University of Pittsburgh is painted a hideous green color, so Zoe dubs it ‘Green Gables’. For her thirteenth birthday, Zoe is presented with Paki, an African Gray parrot, and on a trip to the vet, she meets and develops a crush on Toby, the boy next door. When a burglar breaks into Zoe’s apartment a few days later, she and Toby team up to catch him, and their adventures are filled with a little mystery, a little adventure, and yes, a little romance for Zoe and Toby.

I have to admit: I’m a little biased in my adoration of this book, as it’s set in my hometown and I love that Carol Coffey was able to include so many aspects of Pittsburgh into her story. Zoe is a great little character, brave and determined and strong and uncertain, all at the same time, and reminds me a lot of my own little sister.

Every so often I come across books like Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson that make me wish I was back in school while reading it so that I could have that “Aha!” moment when someone explains everything that I’m obviously missing. Don’t get me wrong, this is a beautifully written book, but maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I read it.

Ruthie and her sister, Lucille, are left on their grandmother’s doorstep in a small town when they are young, shortly before their mother drives off of a bridge into a lake — the very same lake where Ruthie and Lucille’s grandfather met his death when their mother was fifteen. Their grandmother raises them until she passes away, and when she does, her sisters-in-law are recruited to take care of the girls until their aunt, Sophie, can be located and become the girls’ guardian. Sophie is a bit eccentric, and her behavior indicates that she’s spent part of her life as a transient, living her life by the timetables of the trains. Both girls embrace Sophie at first, but Lucille eventually rebels and insists on ‘proper’ meals and habits and activities for the family — eventually moving out — while Ruthie is much more accepting of her aunt’s different way of living.

And really, that’s about it. The plot meanders along, but at least it does so in a beautiful fashion.

“And any present moment was only thinking, and thoughts bear the same relation, in mass and weight, to the darkness they rise from, as reflections do to the water they ride upon, and in the same way they are arbitrary, or merely given. Anyone that leans to look into a pool is the woman in the pool, anyone who looks into our eyes is the image in our eyes, and these things are true without argument, and so our thoughts reflect what passes before them.” (pg. 166)

While it’s not my cup of tea, I can see where this book would captivate those readers who will sit and appreciate the slow pace and gentle buildup and the evolution of Ruthie’s character.

I picked up copy of Women Of The Night by Martin Greenberg on a recent excursion to my local B&N.  At first, it only received a cursury passing glance.  As I made my rounds through the sci-fi / fantasy section, I thought about it a little more.  ‘Women of the night’ could mean either prostitutes or vampires.  You can’t go wrong with either, can you?

Sure enough, it turned out to be a collection of short stories about…you guessed it…female vampires.  Prominently displayed on the cover were 3 of the featured authors:  Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman.  Just those three clinched it for me.  I bought it, and read through it in two days.

A few of the stories, including Gaiman’s and Dick’s, were exceptional.  A few were duds, and a few were meh.  A few were so intensely graphic and overtly sexual that it made my eyes widen.  All in all, a worthwhile read for the bargain basement price of five bucks.