Spider’s Bite – Jennier Estep
I first heard of Jennifer Estep and her Elemental Assassin books when she wrote a guest post in John Scalzi's Big Idea "column". Reading about her reasons for starting the Elemental Assassin series was enough to make me want to get hold of the first book.
Spider's Bite is the first book in the Elemental Assassin series. The story unfolds in a strange version of the American city of Ashland. Dwarves, giants, vampires and humans coexist in the city, and to make everything a bit more extraordinary some people also have elemental magic - hence the name of the series.
The main character, Gin, is an assassin that has a bit of both Stone and Ice magic. Gin enjoys her job and she is good at it, but her life takes an upleasant turn when her handler is killed.
The book delivers on its promise to be fun read. Something is happening all the time, and even though the story is a bit predictable it has enough twists and turns to be entertaining to the very end. Just what I had hoped to get out of the book.
Ashland's place in the larger world is rarely talked about, and the deeper consequences of adding magic to our society is never explored more than necessary. Even with the magic and all the strange races everything seems just like a twisted version of our own world.
The characters in the book are all well made. Each of them have their own small quirks, and each of them has a back story that that you want to learn a bit more about. Most of them seem a bit one sided, either good or bad, but given the quick pace of the story the easy separation feels just right. Few of the people in the story undergo any real change, but this being a fun and easy read I had not expected that either.
In her quest for revenge Gin is joined by two other characters. One is a long time friend who has plenty of reason to tag along, and he plays an important role in the story. Both as a person that contrasts well with Gin, and as a character that has skills that Gin needs. The other character does not fit that well into the story. Without spoiling anything he felt like a strange add on to the story that never served any real purpose. It got a bit better as the book progressed, but he never felt like the same natural fit as most other characters.
One of the things that really impressed me with Jennifer Estep's writing was her description food. One of Gin's hobbies is cooking, and it has to be a passion of Jennifer Estep as well. Every once it a while she would give a detailed description of the food. It was rarely the fancy food that got described, but instead the sandwiches Gin made at home or the salad she prepared at the restaurant she worked. Each time the descriptions left my mouth watering.
Jennifer Estep's description of the sex scenes was also very detailed, at times a bit too much. I feel that sex scenes in book rarely add anything special so they can usually be boiled down to "and then they had hot and passionate sex" without loosing anything. Unfortunately I felt the same way when I read through this book. Luckily it did not happen too often, and it was easy to skim through until the story got going again.
In the end the book left me wanting to know more about Gin and the world around her. It was a very entertaining read, and I can recommend it to anyone looking for a fast and easy book with a bad-ass main character.
Under the Dome – Stephen King
Under the Dome is a big novel, probably one of Stephen King's longest books. In interviews he has said that this is a story that has been brewing in his mind for over twenty years, and after having read the story that does not come as a surprise. The story follows the whole population of a small town and the changing point of views, each with their own goals, keeps the story going at a very fast pace.
The story starts with a large, invisible dome falling on top Chester Mill, a small town in Maine. No one knows were the dome comes from, or why it is there. They only know that it has shut Chester Mill off from the outside world. Communication seem to work through the dome, but nothing else can pass through it. One of the strong sides of most of Stephen King's book is that he always lets the people be the important part and only uses the strange horrors to drive their actions. He has done the same thing here, the Dome is never in the fore-front of the story, but it lies behind almost every decision that the people make.
The population of Chester Mill comes alive as Stephen King writes about them. From the town drunk to the used car dealer suffering from megalomania. Recreating small towns and communities and then seeing what happens when they are locked away from the rest of the world is what Stephen King does best, and in this book it really shines. After only a few pages Chester Mill feels like a proper town and all the characters there seem real.
Only problem with the villain was that he had no good side, he was only evil. I think it would have been much better if he had one redeeming quality. Simply loving his family would have been enough, and I don't think that would have had any negative effect on the story.
The tension that builds up in the book between the factions within Chester Mill and their different approach to handling the Dome is great. Stephen King uses the Dome as a great backdrop to the conflicts that arise as Chester Mill tries to survive their current crisis.
Most of the book is written in a personal third person point of view, but in a few chapters we follow an omnipresent voice that talks directly to us as the reader. That story telling technique can work, but the usage in this book felt wrong. When you are pulled out from the head of the characters the tensions evaporates a little bit, and in a book like this that is not what you want to happen.
[spoiler title="My thoughts on the ending"]
After building up a lot of questions about the Dome throughout the whole book the ending feels very cheap. I like the fact that everything was done on the whim of small (alien) children. Meaninglessness is always a bit more scary than something that you can see an underlying purpose to. But I feel that the solution Stephen King used to make the Dome go away was too easy, as if he realised by the end that he had no way to save the people and having them beg was the first solution that popped into his head. I might actually have like it a bit more if the child had not listened and instead allowed everyone do die inside the Dome.
[/spoiler]
This is one of Stephen King's best books, even though I had a few small gripes with it. Going to sleep took an extra hour each night, as I had to read just one more chapter. Definitely worth reading if you like anything written by Stephen King, or want to get a (big) taste of what he has to offer.