Zero History, Gibson. Yes. I got less of a Clancy vibe off Zero History than I did from Spook Country, so that was pleasant. I enjoyed it sufficiently, though it was certainly not the most compelling book I’ve read in the last year or so. As is sadly common, the editing is pretty sloppy, with offenses varying from the use of “comprise” in a way Strunk and White would never have countenanced to the just flat wrong “…whom Inchmale said had more brains in his little finger…”
Notwithstanding the mechanical flaws and the sedate pacing, Gibson delivers with the ideas and story we have come to expect.

An Object of Beauty, Martin. Yes. Martin’s writing is mechanically nearly flawless, and while it started out a bit writerly for my taste, either he settled down or I became more tolerant. This rather lengthy excerpt (edited somewhat to remove plot-related irrelevancies), I believe, will tell you all you need to know to make a decision about reading the book:

“How can an artist have no effect on you for years and then one day it has an effect on you?”

“I call that the perverse effect. Those things that you hate for so long are insidiously working on you, until one day you can’t resist them anymore. They turn into favorites. It just takes a while to sort out the complications in them. Those artworks that come all ready to love empty out pretty quickly. It’s why outsiders hate the art we love; they haven’t spent time with it.”

The writing and story were easily good enough that I finished and enjoyed the book, and I greatly appreciated the photographs in the book of many of the art works that Martin discusses, but it never completely pulled me in the way I prefer a book to do.

The Loving Dead, Beamer. No. This was a Book Club selection, and I didn’t hate it. Unfortunately, that’s the most I can say for it. I do give Beamer credit for constructing an adequately consistent background and thinking through some implications, but I really need more than that if a writer is going to take me into such a well-traveled region of speculation.

Jar City, Indriðason. No. The cover bills this as “A Reykjavík Thriller”, but it’s really quite far from thrilling. It’s hard to tell how much to blame (or credit) the translation when the words I read are not the words the author wrote, but my failure to find much redeeming in Jar City extends beyond nuances of language. Characters, story, what passed for suspense: all of them failed to pull me in.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, Stein. Yes. Not far into the book, Stein’s narrator says

For me, a good story is all about setting up expectations and delivering on them in an exciting and surprising way.

And that is just what Racing in the Rain does: you learn certain things very early, and you get the rest of the book to watch the inevitable unfold, with occasional surprise and excitement. There are a number of features that I might usually find more irritating, but right now, it worked for me.

Rant: an Oral Biography of Buster Casey, Palahniuk. Yes. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this, having given up on Fight Club very early in. Palahniuk is extremely skilled, and Rant has a number of interesting ideas (despite one of the fancier ones being awfully similar to a classic Zelazny creation). While there were a number of “Oh, I see what you did there” moments, none of them ever reached the level of “Oh, that’s really cool” that would have put Rant into the realm of greatness.

All Clear, Willis. Yes. I remain convinced that Blackout and this could have been trimmed. I don’t know if perhaps Willis thought the seemingly endless agonizing at the end of Blackout and the beginning of All Clear were heightening the tension, but I found them nothing but irritating. I suggested to my book club buddy (who gave up before the 20th page) that skipping the first fifty pages would likely only enhance the experience. Once All Clear got out of Waiting for Godot mode, though, it proved extremely enjoyable.

Behemoth, Westerfeld. Yes. Follows Leviathan, with apparently one more to come in the series. Classified as YA by my library, it’s certainly not a dense read, though it does have a number of interesting ideas threaded through. I was appalled to see “led” spelled “lead” at least twice (spelled correctly at least once); it’s a depressingly common résumé error, and it’s very disappointing to see it creeping into prose. That was really the only issue I had with the book, though: I like the characters, and their adventures do not leave my eyes rolling out of my head, and there haven’t been many books lately that I’ve breezed through quite so pleasantly.

The Waters Rising, Tepper. NoYes. Tepper has for years been one of my old reliables: if she wrote it, I wanted to read it. Sure, it was preachy; sure, there was a bunch of justice ex machina required for her thesis not to fall completely apart; sure, her villains never really had any depth; but her writing was always solid, her stories held my interest, and her non-villan characters were usually well-drawn.
This time, though, while the writing was mechanically sound, and all the usually positive features were present, the book was lumbered with an astounding amount of exposition and explanation. There is a stretch, far enough into the book that the plot has at least picked up a little momentum, where there are ten consecutive pages of nothing but exposition and history. I thought for sure she was starting a multi-book series, with the amount of who’s descended from whom and centuries-ago political struggles recounted, but this was a stand-alone novel. So, between the tremendous volume of telling (not showing) and the eye-rolling quantities of the usual negative features, I would gladly have given this one a miss.
In the two weeks between composing this review and posting it, my feelings about the book haven’t changed, but I’ve found myself selectively remembering bits of the story that I enjoyed, so I have had to revise my recommendation, but not my review.

In the Woods, French. Yes. I’m probably going to have to read The Likeness again, which on the one hand makes me wish I had read In the Woods first. On the other hand, I’m glad I didn’t read it first, because, while I would have liked it just fine, I might not have read any more of French’s books: the foreshadowing was just a little overdone for my taste, and the writing didn’t grab hold of me as tightly as French’s later works have. It’s a fine first novel, and I highly recommend reading the works in order, but know that they get noticeably better after the first one.