Wolfhound Century - Peter Higgins

Inspector Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head.

One of the most unsatisfying books I've read in a long time.

I feel like I missed half the story, like every other page was missing - and those were the key pages to alleviate my confusion.

The book was interesting in the sense that I kept pushing forward, waiting for the big reveal, for everything to come together in some brilliant explanation. But it never came. And, to be honest, I couldn't even give a brief synopsis of this book for someone; I am that lost.

It was filled with such wonderfully descriptive scenes that I often had no idea what was actually going on - what was real and what was simply metaphor.

So many threads have been left untied, which makes me think Higgins is planning another book. As much as I want a satisfactory conclusion, I will not be reading a sequel if there is one.

Prophet of Bones - Ted Kosmatka

Paul Carlsson, a brilliant young scientist, is summoned from his laboratory job to the remote Indonesian island of Flores to collect DNA samples from the bones of a strange, new species of tool user unearthed by an archaeological dig. The questions the find raises seem to cast doubt on the very foundation of modern science, which has proven the world to be only 5,800 years old, but before Paul can fully grapple with the implications of his find, the dig is violently shut down by paramilitaries.

Paul flees with two of his friends, yet within days one has vanished and the other is murdered in an attack that costs Paul an eye and nearly his life. Back in America, Paul tries to resume the comfortable life he left behind but can't cast the questions raised by the dig from his mind. Paul begins to piece together a puzzle that seems to threaten the fabric of society, but the world's governments and Martial Johansson, the eccentric billionaire who financed Paul's dig, will stop and nothing to silence him.

This 'thriller' had no thrill!

It simply plodded along, occasionally going for a brief sprint before returning to its trudging pace.

I thought this book would be fascinating, but it often lost me in its technical jargon. I often felt like I needed some form of forensic/biology degree just to get through various passages.

Not even the characters could redeem this book. They were all painfully flat and superficial, and the only interesting aspects that they might have possessed were only glanced over and never delved into. The character I was most curious about only had a small part before he was killed and we never got to learn who he was beneath the surface. Disappointing.

I wouldn't recommend reading this book unless you already possess knowledge of DNA analysis and a basic grasp of early hominid types.

Stuck - Lissette E. Manning

A world too different from what we once knew...all we hold onto now is survival.

Memories of the dead remind Annie Page of the world she'd once known. Renegade forces are closing in, seeking to command the little that remains. Yet she refuses to stand by and watch the world crumble.

Her children's love the driving force behind the choices that she's made, she's determined to make their world a better place. Yet their survival comes with a price - one that she never meant to pay.

There was nothing special about this book at all.

The blurb makes it sound like it could actually be pretty interesting; however, there was almost no climax nor conclusion. It left me thinking that it was just the introduction to what could have been a really good story.

This story was well written but it could have been so much more. I was saddened that it ended so prematurely.

Asgard Park - Ronald Simonar

Across two continents, three strangers uncover the oldest story on earth and the best kept secret of all times.

I have no idea what this book is about.

Between the undefined acronyms, the incredibly long/difficult names, and the references to groups and organizations I have never heard of, it was extremely hard to figure out what was going on.

From what I could grasp of it, the concept was interesting, as were the events themselves. But why people did what they did, feared who they did, and how it all came together in the end... I am so lost.

The Good Fairies of New York - Martin Millar

Dinnie, an overweight enemy of humanity, was the worst violinist in New York, but was practicing gamely when two cute little fairies stumbled through his fourth-floor window and vomited on the carpet...

When a pair of fugitive Scottish thistle fairies end up transplanted to Manhattan by mistake, both the Big Apple and the Little People have a lot of adjusting to do. Heather and Morag just want to start the first radical fairy punk rock band, but first they’ll have make a match between two highly unlikely sweethearts, start a street brawl between rival gangs of Italian, Chinese, and African fairies, help the ghost of a dead rocker track down his lost guitar, reclaim a rare triple-bloomed Welsh poppy from a bag lady with delusions of grandeur, disrupt a local community performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and somehow manage to stay sober enough to save all of New York from an invasion of evil Cornish fairies.

If they can stop feuding with each other, that is.

I struggled, for the entire length of this book, to not simply walk away from it forever.

The story was presented in such a scatterbrained way that it got me dizzy with all its hopping about. Almost every paragraph was about a different group of fairies dealing with a different issue, all of which remained disconnected for the majority of the book.

There were many threads of story coming together in the end, yet somehow it miraculously got tied up in a tidy little bow that was far too easy for all involved.

However, I applaud the author for providing a wide variety of characters in his story. Unfortunately, his climax was un-climactic. It started to climb and as it was approaching the peak it just stopped and ended instead of talking the extra step to reach the apex before descending.

All in all, a very disjointed and uneventful book.

A Common Loss - Kirsten Tranter

They were five college friends, bonded for life.

Now only four remain: each sharing a common loss that threatens to destroy them all.

A Common Loss is the follow up to Kirsten Tranter's glorious debut, The Legacy. It is a tense melodrama underpinned by mystery and paranoia, set against the mesmerizing backdrop of modern day Las Vegas.

This book was a struggle to get through, to say the least. I persevered because I could feel it slowly building to something big. Only it never did. It was such a let down.

The beginning was painfully slow with many largely irrelevant chunks. When the friends finally arrived in Vegas I thought Alright, now things are gonna get going! Sadly, I was mistaken.

The author cleverly avoided having to write about complicated aspects of the problems faced by the four main characters by having the main character (it was written in first person) conveniently otherwise occupied at the times when much of the planning and problem solving was going on; he just came in and was basically told "Okay, here's what we're gonna do".

Speaking of problem-solving, the conflict was tied up far too tidily. I was shocked. Had I been in their situation, I would have spent a good portion of time freaking out, hopefully eventually coming to a successful resolution, and then I'd be paranoid about it for the rest of my life, unable to return to my happy little existence.

In short, only read this book if you enjoy coming home and smelling the warm, delicious scent of apple pie baking in the oven, only to discover it is simply a scented candle your spouse just lit. Disappointment.