Queenpin by Megan Abbott

Summary: A young woman, hired to keep the books at a down-at-the-heels nightclub, is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Before she knows it, she’s ushered into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money.

Commentary: I’m going to start this review by saying that I have little to no experience with noir (both film and books), crime fiction, gangster fiction, etc. etc. I picked up Abbott’s book here because I so enjoyed her most recent novel, Dare Me, which is both very different (high school setting) and very similar (power plays and relationships between women). I think I might have ended up liking Queenpin even more though! It was gripping, and gritty, and kind of sucked me into a world that I hadn’t really ever experienced before.

Our nameless heroine is chosen by the infamous Gloria Denton to enter a world completely different from her lower-middle-class, secretarial and accounting background. She’s immediately thrust into the world of gambling parlors, smooth-talking men, high fashion, and money money money. There’s bosses behind the scenes pulling strings every which way, and our narrator is just a bit player in a much larger game–and she knows it. One wrong step and your body is buried in a trash heap somewhere, dumped in a river, or covered with a nice layer of lime. That doesn’t mean she isn’t just as drunk on her new life and the new clothes and the seductive nature of danger and walking on the wrong side of the law.

The relationship between Gloria and our never-named protagonist is really the best part about Queenpin though. Gloria, a take-no-shit woman who knows exactly how to play with the big boys, takes on this starry-eyed new protege. This protege starts learning though, and the relationships starts splintering. The anxiety rises and there is the possibility of betrayal around every corner.

I really enjoyed the sort of old-time noir film… vernacular? There was slang in there that I’d never heard, but Abbott made it flow so smoothly and naturally, and I could hear that slow drawl in my head as I read the words on the page. It definitely immersed me into the world of Queenpin, and was just really fun and dramatic to read.

It was also interesting to me that her novel features two women as the main characters, in a genre that historically focuses on the trenchcoated lone white male walking the dark streets of the city, wearing a cool hat and smoking a cigar, maybe trailed and reluctantly seduced by a lovely femme fatale.

This Publisher’s Weekly review sums it up pretty well I think: “Abbott delivers a sharp, slender, hardboiled tale of a protégé’s schooling by a notorious, been-there-done-that moll… Abbott is pitch-perfect throughout: Gloria Denton, still turning heads in her 40s, is as hard a moll as any, and the kid is a beautiful combination of foil and tool as she strives to emulate her role model. The collision, violent and inevitable, rips away the facade of glitz and glamour, and leaves their low-end edifice starkly exposed.”

Author Website: http://www.meganabbott.com/

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Summary: Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near-impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one unlikely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life– a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha… and the secrets of her heart.

My Thoughts: Shadow and Bone has been popping up all over the YA/fantasy blogs recently and I finally got my hands on a copy from my library. I finished it in less than 12 hours and I’m eager for the sequel, so that tells you a bit about how much I liked it.

I think this is Bardugo’s debut novel, and she did a great job taking the traditional high fantasy genre and putting her own twist on it. There’s some great new world building here that was very well done, explained smoothly and  naturally, and made a lot of sense to the plot, which honestly doesn’t always happen in fantasy novels. I also liked the sort of old Russian influence on a lot of the language and the culture in Bardugo’s world–that’s something I haven’t really seen before in YA fantasy.

I especially, especially liked the way Bardugo book-ended her story with the prologue/epilogue-type chapters, where the style and narration switched slightly and opened and closed her story to great effect. Bardugo’s story here has just the right amount of action mixed with mysticism and the unknown.

I’m glad to have a new fantasy series to follow; I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel when it comes out! Also, the cover is one of the more awesome book typography and design combinations I’ve seen in awhile.

Author Website: http://www.leighbardugo.com/

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

Summary: Welcome to the future. Humanity has colonized the solar system – Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond – but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for – and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathizer, Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations – and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

Commentary: Leviathan Wakes is the first in an ongoing series, and I picked it up because I hadn’t read a good space opera in awhile. I was hooked from the first page and couldn’t stop reading. Corey’s novel is very plot-driven with a lot of twists and turns, but I actually got pretty invested in our main characters Holden and Miller, as well as the “mystery girl” from the summary, who, although she wasn’t exactly “present” in the traditional definitions of the word for most of the novel, still captured my thoughts and emotions while reading.

Corey also did a good job of explaining the state of his created universe to the reader without being too heavy-handed. I feel like so many science fiction (and/or fantasy novels) get bogged down describing and explaining the rules and present state of their worlds and it can get really awkward. But with Leviathan Wakes, I learned everything I need to know in a way that made sense with the current plot and character stories.

Leviathan also got me thinking about a couple other issues in science fiction and even current space politics/news. I really enjoy science fiction and I particularly enjoy military space opera, a genre that I think makes sense to a lot of people because so much of our own real-world experience with space and space exploration is very nationalistic–the Space Race between the US and the Soviet Union, NASA, various nations’ space organizations, etc. However, the idea of space being privatized, and the most powerful forces in future space exploration being not countries, or even a united force from earth, but corporations and companies–this an idea that isn’t even accepted presently. However, many of the major players in Corey’s world are just that–companies that have done well in the space industry and in the politics that drive the new frontiers that humans have colonized, especially Mars and the Asteroid Belt.

Leviathan Wakes went beyond your typical spaceship shoot-outs and fancy technology; he introduced a world that had shifting cultural, economic, and even social class issues due to colonization of the solar system, and still made it exciting and full of twists and turns (including a particularly terrifying and interesting enemy).

I’d recommend Corey’s Leviathan Wakes for anyone looking for an exciting science fiction that still has a bit of depth. I think I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel.

Author Website: http://www.danielabraham.com/books-2/the-expanse/leviathan-wakes/

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

My Thoughts: As you can already probably tell from the summary, the relationship depicted by this book is far from normal. I had been hearing about it from several different blogs that I follow and decided to pick it up because reviews were fairly good and I was sort of shocked at just how exactly an author could write a book about an incestual relationship and make it… decent?

Suzuma’s writing is definitely far better than decent. It’s absorbing, gripping, engaging, and from the very beginning you see just how difficult Maya and Lochan’s lives are. Their drunk mother is completely absent and such a horrifyingly bad parent that it made me so angry for the kids. Lochan and Maya are completely in charge of their younger siblings and have to deal with making dinner every night, picking up and dropping off their two youngest siblings at school, reeling in a rebellious, lashing-out brother, and all this on top of their regular schoolwork. I was constantly anxious and worried for them and how their situation was going to pan out. Suzuma write their lives and sufferings and occasional lovely joys so convincingly.

You can see just exactly how Maya and Lochan begin falling into each other. There is no one else around. There is no one else they can depend on and confide in and love. I saw it happen and while I understood it, I was slamming on the brakes in my head the whole time. Once their clandestine romance began I couldn’t understand it truly. The societal and cultural taboo threw up an immediate wall for me, and Suzuma’s beautiful writing couldn’t get me through it.

I was still desperate to know what happened to them, all the way up to the end. And boy was it an ending. Forbidden was perfectly paced and engrossing and definitely well written.

I wouldn’t say I was convinced or involved in the romance–but that’s not truly the point. The best and most successful part of Forbidden was the story of 5 children who loved each other trying to make it absolutely on their own in a world that had little sympathy or use for them.

Author Website: http://www.tabithasuzuma.com/

Non-Fiction Weekend: Pop Culture Economics, Doctors in Training, and Pashtun Culture

This past weekend I veered off the usual trail and read three very different non-fiction books; I enjoyed all of them immensely. Here’s a bit of introduction and review of each one:

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner: This super popular book doesn’t need much of an introduction, but here you go anyway;

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head.

This was a fun, quick read. Some of the findings were pretty surprising to me but some of them were just sort of common sense if you took the time to think about it. If you like Freakonomics I highly recommend Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, whose work is mentioned briefly in Freakonomics. I borrowed Freakonomics from my roommate on a day where I couldn’t get myself interested in any other reading material.

Match Day by Brian Eule. This book was a gift from a friend who is now in medical school, something I’m interested in pursuing myself as well. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did! There were certain points in the book that I was actually sitting on the edge of my seat, sweating with anxiety over the decisions and conflicts faced by the doctors. Highly recommended even if you’re not interested in going into medicine–it’s just exciting and informative and understandable in general.

Every year, on the third Thursday in March, more than 15,000 graduating medical students across the country encounter the biggest moment of their burgeoning young careers. On Match Day, a computer algorithm pairs students with hospital residencies in nearly every field of medicine. The Match determines where each graduate will be assigned the crucial first job as an intern, and shapes the rest of his—or, in increasing numbers, her—life.

Match Day (St. Martin’s Press) is a dynamic, revealing look at three female doctors as they pass through this intense day and take on their first, turbulent year as medical interns.  With his girlfriend entering the medical profession, journalist Brian Eule provides an unprecedented look into both this process and the lives of these new doctors as they face pressure-packed decisions and try to balance any personal life with a profession that demands everything from them. Match Day provides a real-life drama that shows how each comes to learn what it means to heal, to comfort, to lose, and to grieve, all while maintaining a professional demeanor— and the incredible process by which doctors are made in this country.

Secrets from the Field: An Ethnographer’s Notes from North Western Pakistan by Benedicte Grima. I haven’t read too much anthropology or ethnography so I’m not exactly sure how to judge books on that subject. However, Grima’s book here is more of a personal memoir detailing her many varied experiences traveling both alone and with her infant daughter (!) through rural and tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. She’s also written a different, more scholarly/academic book regarding her work with the Pashtun culture. Grima’s experiences as written here were extremely interesting, and were detailed and clear enough that I felt like I had gotten at least a beginning, amateur understanding of the Pashto people, specifically the admonition that one does not just speak Pashto, one does Pashto. There is a very definite set of rules and expectations that govern the culture and Grima details both her blunders and her successes as she navigate her way through this world.

The personal accounts contained here, reveal the untold experiences and relationships of an ethnographer with the people she lived and worked among for over 10 years in northwestern Pakistan among Afghan refugees and tribal Pakistani Pashtuns. They are the everyday occurrences and personal experiences of a woman living alone, or with her infant daughter, secrets and blunders withheld from academic books. Friends and colleagues have asked what it was like to be a foreign woman alone in an isolated and strict tribal Muslim culture. They ask even more so now, piqued by curiosity about the culture that is said to be protecting Osama bin Laden. These stories herein answer many of those queries and reveal information complementary to other political and scientific books.