The Girl with the Drag-on Narrator

I spent the last few days wading through Stieg Larsson's international best seller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.   It is a story of two people, Blomkvist and Salander, and how they meet and interact and solve a GREAT mystery together.  Charming.  The book was recommended to me by a dear friend, and I will go ahead and say I can tell why she liked it.  It's full of delicious details, intrigue, sex,  & odd turns of event.  And the better portion of the book kept me interested and engaged. 

I do have some things to say though.  Let's start at the end.  I can understand the author wanting to set up for a sequel, which I believe exists in some capacity, but the ending was SO abrupt that I coughed on what I was drinking.  It was like walking down the sidewalk on a sunny day, turning your head to speak to someone next to you and running into a sign post.  I thought for sure there was going to be another sentence, paragraph, anything, after the last period... but no.  Swift kick to the gut and this book is OVER. 

The next thing that bothered me is the heavy handedness of the narrator.  There was an awful lot of explaining of Swedish this and business that and the whole story is focused on the life of this one clan Blomkvist is hired to investigate (he's a journalist).  So the reader is subjected to page after page of explanation about what is happening in the Vanger family.  I ended up skimming portions because, really, it was pointless.  I know setting up a believable and rich back story is important, but I wanted to read suspense and mystery, that was like reading a history book.  And it went on and on.  Hence the title of the post.  Maybe if I was Swedish I would understand better.  Also, I think there should have been a map of Sweden in the front of the book, just for the sake of the ignorance of American readers.  Throw us a bone here.  On the other hand, it kind of makes me want to go to Sweden. Anyways...

Blomkvist is a character of questionably moral character.  Well not really, but he goes to jail for part of the book (spelled gaol in sweedonese) and he regularly has sex with married women.  Tsk tsk Blomkvist.  I guess overall, Larsson gets you to turn the pages but towards the end I was thinking that the overall plot structure was a little weak.  I'm a jerk though. Lots of people love this book.  Lots of wonderful intelligent well-read people.  But seriously, the major action was over, and there were still about 100 pages to go.  I'm all about finishing things right, but I was pretty much done.  I had stayed up late to finish the book, and that point I was like, the mystery is solved, the action is over, I'm going to bed.  I shouldn't want to go to bed if there are still 100 pages left of a highly riveting novel.

That's neither here nor there, because I haven't even talked about why I think my friend really liked it.  Stieg Larsson must be an advocate for women's rights, or against violence against women.  The beginning of every section had a statistic on violence against women in Sweden.  Then there were instances in the plot where women were dominated against their will, raped, tortured, and killed.  And then, to top it all off, the excerpt from his next book was a scene where a thirteen year old girl is being tortured in captivity.  That's a theme if I ever saw one.  If violence against women is a trigger for you, then you should definitely avoid books by Larsson.  That is about as straightforward as I can be about it.  I came away questioning whether I needed to have read those graphic descriptions myself, but if it's a trigger for you, in all seriousness, don't read it.  There are other best-selling suspense novels out there.

That said I think there is an interesting social commentary under the surface in the novel.  I would love to unpack it more, but my time is short.  I think if I were Swedish, I'd be on it.  At any rate, I don't regret reading this book by any means, I just wish it were a little snappier with the narration and a little smoother with the ending.  Gripe over.

Final score: B

Angel-o, Angel-ol, Angelology

I listened to Angelology by Danielle Trussoni by Penguin Audio.

Susan Denaker is the voice actor.  She does a fine job with the accents and the flow of the novel. It is just a shame.....

From the book jacket:
Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 correspondence between the late mother superior of St. Rose Convent and the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller plunges her into a secret history: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim. 
For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

Rich in history, full of mesmerizing characters, and wondrously conceived, Angelology blends biblical lore, the myth of Orpheus and the Miltonic visions of Paradise Lost into a riveting tale of ordinary people engaged in a battle that will determine the fate of the world.


Despite that description, I decided to download the book.
It was rough.
This book seems to lean toward several genres while owing an allegiance to none.  I can try to explain it.  It is not a true spy thriller; it is kinda supernatural (there are the angels). There is some detective work and lots of mythology, but mostly this is a boring book.

I read a few reviews before completing the first third of the book.  The reviews informed me that the novel had been prematurely or accurately compare to a Dan Brown novel. It depended on whom you believed.

Evangeline's father sent her to St. Rose to learn obedience.  She became its youngest nun working in the library.  One day she opens a letter from a graduate student, Verlaine,  requesting copies of correspondence between A. Rockefeller and the Mother Innocenta from their archives .  She quickly types a negative response but she is intrigued.  She looks for evidence to prove that there is no evidence and finds evidence - the plot begins.  From there she and Verlaine unravel the tangled web linking angelologists, nephilim, the nuns at St. Rose and her family history in the search for the fabled lyre.

The author attempts to explain the urgency and motives for this search, all of the reasons seemed confounding to me.   For example, why burn down convents in the search for the lyre? 


The book does not explain much more than that.  Therefore, I was expected to believe that a secret group of scientists have studied the nephilim for ways to stop their destructive influence on human civilization for thousands of years. I guess that is okay because this scene .....

In the last minutes of his life, his lungs burning for air, [spoiler ] was drawn into the horrifying translucency of his killer's eyes.  They were pale and ringed with red, intense as a chemical fire stabilized in a frozen atmosphere.

Made me say aloud, WTF?  Where does this book take place, on Mars? Pluto?
Was I supposed to understand that metaphor?
Here is another one:
The air was cold and thick in her lungs, soothing as ice on a wound.
Or was that a simile? 

There were a lot of awkward metaphors that did not assist me in understanding the text.

The author writes scenes some with tedious detail and others that require more than a simple BA degree to understand.  Many passages reminded me of watching slide shows in  my Art history course of KSU.  In one scene she takes great care to describe the fit and brand name of a character's boxer shorts and his ties. For several minutes, I wondered why she bothered....
In another she lauds the characteristics of Vermont marble and precisely details the renovations of a sculpture garden before directing the character to reveal the location of a treasure. 
I must agree with other reviewers. The novel has a movie imagery quality to it as if the author expected the novel to be seen on screen rather than read or heard (as in my case).  I admit, this worked for Dan Brown.....

The novel attempts to convince me that it is a thriller about on-going war between the offspring of angels and humans. If there were such a war, I would assume many things:

• A group of angelologists would have infinite resources after a few thousand years.  There should exist resources in the area of espionage, subterfuge, anti-angel weaponry, cryptography, and defensive tactics. 

• Maybe that is the North American in me raised on the spy gadgetry of James Bond, the quests of  LOTR, detective work of Sherlock Holmes and the religious overtones of C. S. Lewis (did you see the joke I made there?)  I have high expectations for plot devices.  I cannot comprehend how a long-standing organization would lack serious fortification. I felt that at any time, a nephilium could just walk right into the room.  

• If a family of murderous angel spawn had me under constant surveillance, I would not drive a car with the license plate "Angel1." Would you?

• Understanding that angelologists have generations of research on angelic bodies, I would be damn sure to own a weapon or tool that would dissuade them from bothering me.

• I would find the nephilim strategy of waiting until an angelologist gathered enough research to make him/her an expert a particular field of angelic studies in order to torture, murder and steal the body of knowledge unacceptable.  These travesties should be anomalies not commonplace. 

I should note that St. Rose is a haven for angelologists, I figured out very early that Evangeline is being hidden. Whoopdedooo. Big reveal there......

• Finally, I should be able to recognize friend or foe. Angelologists should have a secret handshake, brand, locket, phrase, or something by which to identify the brothers and the sisters for the cause.  Being raised in the culture, Evangeline should have been able to recognize the relationship of her convent to her life with her parents who were angelologists. 

The book divides into three parts or spheres. The first sphere sets the plot of the book in  New York 1999.  Then without much warning, the reader is sent back in time to 1943 into pre-occupied and later occupied France.  This second sphere provides some of the backstory.  Other than that, it was pointless.  The final sphere takes us back to 1999 with only one day having past.  The third sphere attempts to bring everything together into a final wrestling match with the nephilim.  The books conclusion was well formulated.  Sadly, it opened the door for a sequel.

The names of the characters made me giggle.   Dr. Seraphina. Dr. Raphael. Percival Grigori. Gabriella. Angela. Celestine.  Did the author think that readers are children?  I got it, it is a movie, er book,  about angels.    Most of the book read like a lecture.  As  a first book in a series, I can permit some lecturing on the part of the author. Unfortunately, the amount of lecturing on the 17 tracks  were insanity. 

If you are wondering, why did I bother to finish this book.  It is because I was waiting for someone to get kissed by an angel. 
C-

Queen Victoria hunts demons wearing lacy undies

Recently, I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I liked it. 

I had avoided 19th century stories based in the United Kingdoms since taking British literature in High School. 

I just didn't think the themes and such applied to anything that I have experienced as a Black woman. The Regency and Victorian eras seemed very foreign to me.

All that changed when I read Soulless by Gail Carriger.   It is set in the Victorian era.  I finally saw the connection to the themes and customs of that era to those of this one amid a vampire/werewolf romance story.  As a former anthropology major (for a year), I could appreciate the social nuances of class, sex, ethnicity, etiquette, propriety, fashion and courting of that era and relate it to my 21st century experiences.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies aided me in understanding the Regency era in the same manner.  

Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter  taught me the politics involved in being the reigning monarch in England while a demon horde ravages the lands and vies for the throne.  There was  some interesting xenophobia and bawdy jokes about Germans.  There is historical reference to the reform movement and real events in the life of Queen Victoria.  Cool.

As I read the novel, I found that it paced like a SyFy movie just developed a little more.

The book jacket  promises a story about a newly crowned queen who receives an arsenal of demon hunting weapons in addition to her crown and scepter.  Not exactly true. It is a conspiracy thriller.  There you go. 

The book actually follows the Queen as circumstances lead her to become a demon hunting monarch and mother of two.  A sequel to this books would undoubtedly chronicle her blood and gory exploits during her reign but this novel did not.  This is not to write that there were monitored descriptions of death, flesh eating, bloody katanas, and other atrocities.  The author has a fine style to describe gruesome scenes with vivid imagery, ingenious quips, and evil villains all with a dash of romance. 

For example: 

'Sir, it's the zombies, sir,' Perkins managed, breathing heavily.

There was a crack of lightning from outside, a rumble of thunder.

'Yes?' said Quimby, still irritated. 'What about the zombies?'

'Sir, they're eating the prostitutes.' 

That paragraph introduces a hilarious scene of flesh eating debauchery. 

The characters to note are Phillip, Victoria, Maggie, Melbourne, and Quimby.  Quimby provides the comedy in the story.  Maggie moves the action along.  The evolving relationships between Melbourn and Victoria and Phillip and Victoria provide both conflict and intrigue.  The evolution of Victoria's character from third in line to the throne to a demon hunter is really slow.  

The first half of the book bored me except for the chapters dedicated to the antics of Quimby and his faithful zombie servant Perkins.   Even so, the book could have added another 100 pages or so to the second half and I would have been perfectly pleased.  The second half contained quite a bit of blood and gore.  Perfect scene staging for a Saturday night movie. 

You should read this book if you like action, plot twists, zombies, coach chases, hand to paw combat,   monster rats, demonology, visits to the lunatic asylum, and discussing the role of state sanctioned torture for political prisoners.  

C+ with  potential in a sequel

Another reviewer recognized some similarities between the characters and action of the book to the Aliens movies.