100. Light Raid

by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice (263 pgs)

Rating: 4

Ariadne Hellene starts the book as a displaced refugee from the Western United States who's under constant laser attack by the Quebeckers. She quickly finds a way to run home, however, and discovers her entire family embroiled in espionage and intrigue.

Structurally, Light Raid is fairly interesting. The concept of media and news spin is central to the development of the plot. So it's not surprising that there's a 'news' snippit between every chapter. It creates an interesting affect of following the story through the media and also through the events in the chapters. Perhaps there's a social statement there.

The characters were a lot of fun and the plot held together. This is very much sci-fi meets spy thriller.

99. Every Which Way But Dead

by Kim Harrison (501 pgs)

Rating: 4

Rachel Morgan made a deal with a demon and now she has to pay up. Lucky for her though, she gets to keep her soul and that means she gets to keep her free will. Ivy is more sad vampire queen than ever, Jenks is annoyed, and Kisten might not be the insufferable bad boy he at first seemed. So, all in all, just another typical day at Vampiric Charms.

I really enjoyed Every Witch Way But Dead. Rachel's relationship with the rest of the characters saw a great deal of work and was convincingly pulled off. The plot moved along at a good clip but there was so much going on that it was easy to forget about events that were set up about 200 pages earlier which caused a great deal of flipping back to find where it was mentioned earlier. Still. I simply couldn't put it down.

98. Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis (445 pages)

Rating: 4

Kivrin is a historian specializing the medieval period. However the powers that be don't allow time travel to the medieval times. So when the head of the medieval studies manages to get the restriction temporarily lifted, Kivrin is the first to volunteer. Her friend and teacher, Dunworthy, is less then thrilled, however, and the events of the book seem to confirm his suspicions.

Set in a near future, Doomsday Book is the first of Willis's books that I've read so far that firmly lands in the science fiction/fantasy genres. The book is obviously well researched and enthralling. Structurally there are two plot lines that diverge in the first hundred pages and don't reconverge until the last chapter. Both story lines, in some way, have to do with plague or epidemic. This is one of those books that once it grabs you, it will not let you go and you absolutely must finish the book. The only complaint I have is that the future is dated at 2056. I'm sure it seemed like a long way off at the time but to me it's overtly distracting since it's just about 50 years away and there's no way we'll be time traveling at that point. In my opinion, any way but it's truly a small issue.

I heartily recommend this book to everyone.

97. Lincoln's Dreams

by Connie Willis (212 pgs)

Rating: 3

Annie is a young woman with a problem. She has horrible dreams that keep her from sleeping. But it's not until she meets Jeff that she truly realizes that she may be having Robert E. Lee's nightmares for him. She and Jeff race to find out the source of the dreams before something ominous comes to pass.

Lincoln's Dreams is an interesting cross between a fantasy novel and historical fiction. The reader is never truly sure what the cause of the dreams really is and there are several theories in the text that all seem equally likely. The characters are not as convincing as in Willis's other novels but the book was still quite enjoyable.

I would recommend this to history buffs, civil war maniacs, and anyone who enjoys historical fiction.

96. Bellwether

by Connie Willis (247 pgs)

Rating: 4

Sandy Foster is a statistical sociologist who studies the causes of fads. Bennett O'Reilly is a chaos theory scientist currently working with macaques. Both of them work in corporate hell. Together will they unravel one of the secrets of the universe or just fall in love?

While I was reading Bellwether I ran into a friend who had read this book in High School. His opinion of it was not very high. He said that it didn't strike him as true science fiction. The conversation then meandered off into a discussion of various authors who's books ended up being badly classified for one reason or another.

Whether this book is truly misclassified as science fiction or not is debatable. I think the problem is that there is an expectation that science fiction is going to be futuristic a la Heinlein and Asimov. Truly, I believe what qualifies a book as science fiction is an exploration of a scientific theory or possibility. I think the futuristic ideal is common side affect of this exploration but not a prerequisite of the genre. So in that sense, Bellwether is truly science fiction although not at all futuristic, it's actually set in the 1990's. To avoid misleading, however, Nacy Pearl's description of Willis's work as 'speculative fiction' may be more apt.

Bellwether starts out a little slow but it's well worth the effort and is an interesting well crafted read. I would recommend this particularly to people interested chaos theory or the infuriating persistence of fads.

List 1: Connie Willis: Too Good To Miss

Source: Book Lust page 246

This list is less thematic and more 'hey read this author' but Pearl's description of Willis' style is intriguing and oddly familiar. I feel that I may have read this author before but can't seem to dredge it up in my memory.

Books In The List:
1. Lincoln's Dreams
2. Passage
3. To Say Nothing of the Dog
4. Bellwether
5. Doomsday Book
6. Fire Watch
7. Impossible Things
8. Uncharted Territory
9. Remake
10. Miracle and Other Christmas Stories
11. Light Raid (in collaboration with Cynthia Felice)
12. Promised Land (in Collaboration with Cynthia Felice)
13. Water Witch (in Collaboration with Cynthia Felice)

Mentioned but not really part of the list:
14. Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome
15. Have Space Suit - Will Travel by Robert Heinlein (This was suggest by a friend as the link between Jerome's Three Men In a Boat and Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog.

95. Eleven Minutes

by Paulo Coelho (273 pgs)

Rating: 3

Translated from its original Portuguese, Eleven Minutes is about a young Brazilian woman who embarks on a personal adventure to try and figure out what love is. In doing this, she leaves her country, travels to Switzerland, becomes a prostitute, and falls in love. Through all of this she keeps a diary.

I enjoyed this book. It was a relatively quick read and there was an interesting aspect of fairy tale to the prose which may or may not have been intentional. I worry about the subject matter though and wouldn't suggest it for young women. It doesn't precisely glamorize prostitution, but it does make it seem like much less of a harsh world. Of course there's cultural differences to be considered but still, I would feel uncomfortable recommending it to anyone I felt was...impressionable.

In general, however, I felt it was an interesting exploration of the difference between sex and love and would recommend it to people who have trouble with serial monogamy.

94. Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden (428 pgs)

Rating: 4

This is a rather interesting story about a young Japanese girl who is essentially forced into becoming a geisha. Aside from the cultural interest, the story is amazingly similar to what you'd expect of western women. What makes this story shine is the mix of cultural education and intensely described settings. I feel that I will probably want to re-read this at some point and would recommend it to anyone who's intrigued by different cultures.