SciFi Month: Alternative History Series Recommendation (and a plug for Literrater)

I like alternative history books, if you don't catch on to that fact by the end of this month I'll just tell you outright right now. There is a great trio of books by Jo Walton ("Small Change") that I really enjoyed. The books are all loosely strung together by a few character who show up in more than one book but you could read them independently of each other and not feel lost. I really enjoyed all of them but I think my most favorite was the first book. Hopefully they arouse your curiosity :)

The descriptions and picture are from Goodreads. Click on pictures for link:

One summer weekend in 1949--but not our 1949--the well-connected "Farthing set", a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before. 

Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married--happily--to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic. 

It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates. But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts…and looking beyond the obvious.

As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out--a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.

In 1949, eight years after the "Peace with Honor" was negotiated between Great Britain and Nazi Germany by the Farthing Set, England has completed its slide into fascist dictatorship. Then a bomb explodes in a London suburb. 

The brilliant but politically compromised Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is assigned the case. What he finds leads him to a conspiracy of peers and communists, of staunch King-and- Country patriots and hardened IRA gunmen, to murder Britain's Prime Minister and his new ally, Adolf Hitler.

Against a background of increasing domestic espionage and the suppression of Jews and homosexuals, an ad-hoc band of idealists and conservatives blackmail the one person they need to complete their plot, an actress who lives for her art and holds the key to the Fuhrer's death. From the ha'penny seats in the theatre to the ha'pennies that cover dead men's eyes, the conspiracy and the investigation swirl around one another, spinning beyond anyone's control. 

In this brilliant companion to Farthing, Welsh-born World Fantasy Award winner Jo Walton continues her alternate history of an England that could have been, with a novel that is both an homage of the classic detective novels of the thirties and forties, and an allegory of the world we live in today.

In 1941 the European war ended in the Farthing Peace, a rapprochement between Britain and Nazi Germany. The balls and banquets of Britain’s upper class never faltered, while British ships ferried “undesirables” across the Channel to board the cattle cars headed east. 

Peter Carmichael is commander of the Watch, Britain’s distinctly British secret police. It’s his job to warn the Prime Minister of treason, to arrest plotters, and to discover Jews. The midnight knock of a Watchman is the most dreaded sound in the realm. 

Now, in 1960, a global peace conference is convening in London, where Britain, Germany, and Japan will oversee the final partition of the world. Hitler is once again on British soil. So is the long exiled Duke of Windsor—and the rising gangs of “British Power” streetfighters, who consider the Government “soft,” may be the former king’s bid to stage a coup d’état. 

Amidst all this, two of the most unlikely persons in the realm will join forces to oppose the fascists: a debutante whose greatest worry until now has been where to find the right string of pearls, and the Watch Commander himself.

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Here's my plug for Literrater. You basically go on, rate books that you've, and then earn points to use for free books or for Amazon.com gift cards. It's a fun way to spend time (especially if your husband has a tendency to fall asleep on the floor at 8:30pm which mine has a tendency to do). Here is my referral link if you'd like to sign up!

Ben Winter's Last Policeman Trilogy and Why You Should Read It

So I'm going to share with you all one of my favorite book series' today. It's the Last Policeman trilogy by Ben Winters. The first two books are available now. "The Last Policeman" is the first book and the second is "Countdown City". I'm going to tell you a little about Ben, a little about the books, and hopefully by then you will all be as jazzed to read the third book as I am when it comes out in July. Though if Quirk would like to send me an ARC so I could read it before everyone else I would be pumped. (I'm not too proud to beg.)

Let's start with Ben. First you can find him on twitter at : @BenHWinters. He's pretty active on there. These books are not his first, he also wrote "Sense & Sensibilities and Sea Monsters." (He's written others too but I just wanted to use this picture, so sue me). We all know how I feel about Jane Austen but I'm still a little tempted to read this. Mostly because of the cover. I also like Ben because he lives in Indianapolis, which is a city I have spent some time in. All my mom's family is from Indiana and I spent many a summer in backwoods, straight country Indiana so Ben gets some points for being a Hoosier.

Laughing and repulsed all at the same time.

Anyway, back to the trilogy. 

"The Last Policeman" came out in July of 2012. And it was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best original paperback. 

So here's a quick and dirty summary. Hank Palace is a newly minted police detective in Concord, New Hampshire. In early 2012 the world is given some life changing news, an asteroid will be colliding with earth within the year and it will probably wipe out all life on the planet. Maia will be making contact with earth on October 3rd. There are measures taken to keep the world from dissolving into complete chaos, but it's inevitable in some degrees in some places.

Hank copes with this news by staying on the job. It's a much depleted squad with much depleted resources but to maintain some kind of normalcy he dresses in work appropriate clothes, follows protocol and keeps doing his job. One day he is called to the scene of a suspected suicide in a McDonald's bathroom. These calls are not unusual, a lot of people are coping with their impending doom by ending their lives. What troubles Hank about this suicide is that the victim hung himself with a very expensive belt, but all of his other clothes were very cheap. He suspects murder, but everyone left on the force rolls their eyes and tells him to let it go. Everyone's going to be dead in October anyway, right?

Hank doesn't let it go. There is drugs, fraud, his weird sister and her trouble making husband, a beautiful girl and more. The deeper he digs the more dangerous it gets!

"Countdown City" was released in July of 2013.

Hank has been granted early retirement (yay?) from the police force, so he is off the crime beat, at least officially. A woman that he hasn't seen in years appears at his door begging for help to find her missing husband. There are only 77 days until the asteroid comes and Hank doesn't tell her that at this point there's nothing he can do for her or anyone else. People are going missing every day. Most of them by choice.

But because Hank and this woman have a past, and because he needs something to do to keep his mind off the fact that Maia is going to be hitting Indonesia soon, he agrees to help. The world has gotten rougher and less civilized from when we left it last. There is a very short scene with a housewife, and young boy on a skateboard, and some water that really stopped me in my tracks and gave me pause.

Nico, Hank's sister helps him with this case, which is kind of a mixed blessing. There's a lot of scenes at a college campus that has dissolved into an anarchist commune-type of place awash with drugs and conspiracy theories. As Hank works on the case he to find Brett Cavatone he founds out things about what the government is doing even he is shocked...

What I think is the greatest thing about these books is it asks the question: "You know the day of your death. What do you do? How do you act? Do you keep on? Do you end at all? Do you turn into a monster? Do you turn into a saint? How do you cope?" It's these questions that really roll around in your brain while you're reading these books.I also thought it was interesting that a lot of people go "bucket list". When you realize that you're time is numbered people suddenly decide to do the things they always wanted. Paddle the Amazon, see the Grand Canyon, live in Paris... no time like the present!

This book also just won the Philip K Dick Award for 2014 as well!

The third and final book "World of Trouble" comes out July of this year! Will everyone die? Will there be a last minute savior? Will it whiz right by earth and then all of this chaos was for nothing?!?! I have so many questions!

Are you intrigued? I hope you are! Has anyone else read these?

Series Recommend: The Chaos Walking Trilogy

Guys, this is our next installment of "series recommend" and it's a bad ass one. There is murder, deadly viruses, space travel, and man eating bayou creatures. Patrick Ness is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy, and he is a consistently interesting writer.These were the first books that I read by him and I'm really excited to share with you, probably more of his books will show up here in the future.

The first book in the Chaos Walking trilogy is called "The Knife of Never Letting Go".

Todd Hewitt is about to turn 13, and lives in a rural/swampy farming community eking out a living subsistence farming with his two adopted parents Cillian and Ben. (Pretty normal so far, right? That changes right about now). Todd, like every other person in his community can hear the thoughts of everyone and everything around him. But not in a way that he can control. When he walks past someone the thoughts that that person has flies into his own mind unbidden. This means there is never a moment of peace for anyone in his community, they call it The Noise.He can even hear his dog's thoughts, which is kind of like listening to a toddler.

It hasn't always been this way. His community had been settled by a small group of Christian farmers from earth (did I mention we're not on earth? Because we are not on earth. We're basically in Space Louisiana, God helps us) who had lived peacefully for quite sometime.However a germ had been released by the planet's native species (called the Spackle) which KILLED all the women and left the men with the constant "noise" in their heads. Though recently Todd has found a spot in the woods that is absolutely silent....

I know that's a lot. Let's have a cuppa while that settles in.

Todd tells Ben and Cillian about the silent spot in the woods. They react strangely and tell Todd that he has to run away, right now. They hand him a knapsack with some possessions and a book that he didn't know had existed before, his mother's diary. Todd is pissed because he doesn't know what's going on but he does as he is told, faithful dog Manchee in tow. When he gets to the swamp he is attacked by the town's preacher named Aaron, who has never liked Todd. Todd manages to escape when Aaron is attacked by a crocodile.Todd continues to run through the swamp and stumbles across the silent place. He sees a girl, who is silent but shows him that she has crash landed in a spaceship that has come from (our) earth. They are soon pursued by more townsmen who are intent on killing Todd and this new girl.

I know that that is a lot to take in and this is pretty long already so I'm just going to say that Todd finds out the terrible truth about what actually happened to the women of his settlement,what ritual he would have had to perform to "become a man" at 13 in Prentiss, and that there is a cure for The Noise. He and the girl run far beyond Prentiss's borders to placs that Todd never knew existed.

The next 2 books in the trilogy are called "The Ask and the Answer" and "Monsters of Men". Patrick Ness has also written very small stories that go between the books and one following "Monsters of Men".

Hopefully this has intrigued you enough to go and read this trilogy. I think it'll blow your mind and make you really thankful that you can't hear anyone else's thoughts!

Series Recommend: Maze Runner Trilogy

I have really come to appreciate the book series. Sometimes I struggle finding books to read that intrigue me and a good book series does the book planning for you. In honor of my occasional reading laziness I'm going to do a series of posts about different book series (serieses? series-usis?) that you may enjoy.

Due to the nature of it being a series some things may get a little *spoilery*. I will do my very best to keep it to a minimum, just enough to intrigue you to read them.

The first series we are going to talk about is the Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner. I heard about this series from watching an interview with Elizabeth Banks. An interviewer was asking her if she had read the Hunger Games series previous to being cast as Effie Trinket, she said that she hadn't but that she read them after she had been cast and it reminded her of the Maze Runner trilogy which she really enjoyed.

If it's good enough for someone from the Capitol it's good enough for us schmucks

The first book is Maze Runner.

It starts with our main character,Thomas waking up in a box. He doesn't know why he's there, he doesn't know how he got there, he doesn't know anything about himself, all he knows is that his name is Thomas. The box opens and he's surrounded by a group of boys, all about his age. He finds out that the box is kind of like an elevator from an unknown location to where they are now, the Glades. The Glades is a big open area surrounded by a complex maze. The maze is inhabited by things called Grievers (which sound gross by the descriptions lots of fleshy bits and stingers). The Grievers sting brings back memories of your past but it's incredibly painful and potential fatal.

The boys are organized into a little community, each with their own jobs. There are a special group of boys whose soul job is to try to find the end to the maze. They go out running for hours a day, always sure to be back by dusk so that when the doors to the maze close they are not stuck in the maze with the Grievers.
The day after Thomas arrives another person arrives in the box/elevator. For the first time ever, the inhabitant is a girl and she comes bearing the message that she is the last person that will be sent. Then she goes into a coma.

Thomas proves himself an valuable community member and becomes a head runner. He even saves some of his fellow runners by tricking some Grievers to fall of "the cliff" at the edge of the maze. Thomas and the girl (Teresa) realize that they can communicate telepathically and she tells him that "the end" will begin soon.

A very chaotic next few days follow where they realize that the maze was never meant to be solved, it was just designed as test, a cruel joke by the people who put them there- The Creators.Once the mystery of the maze is solved, and with over half of their group killed by Grievers, they group finds themselves in a whole new scenario when the REAL trouble starts.

I'm not going to go into the second and third books but let's just say that the kids don't find themselves in a much better situation. There is intrigue, lies, betrayal and murder most foul....

If you're intrigued, pick them up at your local library!