This extraordinary, magical novel is the
story of Clare and Henry who have known each
other since Clare was six and Henry was
thirty-six, and were married when Clare was
twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but
true, because Henry is one of the first
people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement
Disorder: periodically his genetic clock
resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly
into his past or future. His disappearances
are spontaneous and his experiences are
alternately harrowing and amusing. The Time
Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time
travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love
for each other with grace and humour. Their
struggle to lead normal lives in the face of
a force they can neither prevent nor control
is intensely moving and entirely
unforgettable.
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Bridge of Birds is a lyrical fantasy novel. Set in "an Ancient China that never was", it stands with The Princess Bride and The Last Unicorn as a fairy tale for all ages, by turns incredibly funny and deeply touching. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1985, and Hughart produced two sequels: The Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. All present the adventures of Master Kao Li, a scholar with "a slight flaw in [his] character", and Lu Yu, usually called Number Ten Ox, his sidekick and the story's narrator. Number Ten Ox is strong, trusting, and pure of heart; Master Li once sold an emperor shares in a mustard mine, because "I was trying to win a bet concerning the intelligence of emperors."
Number Ten Ox comes from a village in
which the children have been struck by a mysterious illness. He
recruits Master Li to find the cure and comes along to provide
muscle. They seek a mysterious Great Root of Power, which may be a
form of ginseng. Of course, nothing turns out to be as simple as it
seems; great wrongs must be avenged and lovers separated must be
reunited, from the most humble to the highest. And even in the midst
of cosmic glory, Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub are picking the
pockets of their own lynch mob, who are frozen in awe and wonder.
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Martel, Yann - Life Of Pi |
Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion."
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Foster, Alan Dean - Sentenced To Prism
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Reviewer: bpwhittaker (see more about me) from Bellefonte, PA United States A friend of mine lent me a copy of this book, and I couldn't put it down. The descriptions of the inhabitants of Prism shows Foster's fabulous imagination. I give it 4 stars for the wonderful descriptive qualities alone. It would be next to impossible for two different people to imagine the same kinds of creatures as set forth in the book. The only downside to the book is that the plot/story development is fairly typical/ametuerish sci-fi. But the monsters: Very imaginative! Worth a read.
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While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon
receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of
the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body,
police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the
enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a
trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible
for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
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In his fiction, at least, Frederick Busch is no stranger to the
Victorian era: his 1978 novel The Mutual Friend was a meticulous
reconstruction of the Dickensian universe, right down to the
last wisp of pea-soup fog. In The Night Inspector, he ventures
an equally deep immersion in the past. This time, however, Busch
takes us to post-Civil-War Manhattan, where a disfigured veteran
named William Bartholomew rages against the Gilded Age--even as
he demands remuneration for his own losses.
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The planet is a paradise: a single continent in a massive ocean;
tropical weather all year round; beautiful beaches; warm and
friendly people. It's the Bali, the Tahiti of the galaxy. But
when the Federation discovers it, its fate will hang by a
feather. The Federation will open it up, develop it and the
natives will die as their food source is destroyed. |
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The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could
not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of
epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern
Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its
meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps
dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of
the population with it. |
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Thorne Smith is a master of urban with and sophisticated
repartee. Topper, his best-known work, is the hilarious,
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| Nothing much happens in Donnerville. At least not to the young
librarian, Jane Kerry. Then one day Jane
finds an envelope containing a fifty-dollar bill and a note
instructing her to "Look homeward, angel."
Jane pulls a copy of the Thomas Wolfe nove of that Title off the
shelf and finds a second envelope. This one |
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| "A thriller, A gripping tale ... that you will not set down
until it is finished. Steinbeck has touched the quick." -- The New York Times
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Matt didn't know the scrap of parchment was a trap. So he read
the runes -- and found himself on a world where
reciting verses worked magic. His forst effort got him locked in
a dungeon by the evil sorcerer Malingo. Trying
for light, he brought forth a fire-breathing, drunken dragon,
who told Princess Alisade, rightful ruler, was also
held in the dungeon.
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| The creator of such beloved storybook characters for children as
Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore, A.A. Milne was also the
author of numerous dramas, essays, and novels for adults --
among them, this droll and finely crafted whodunit.
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| Forward, Robert - Dragon's Egg
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Robert L Forward's Dragon's Egg has a single feature to recommend it: it is a thoroughly hard science fiction novel with a very, very cool central idea. That central idea concerns the development of life on a neutron star, where gravity is so intense that subatomic particles mush together rather than repel. Naturally, the denizens of this neutron star, lovingly dubbed "cheela," look a little different from humans: they are only a few centimeters tall, and spread flat rather than up; their whole lives are essentally lived on a two-dimensional plane; and because of the warping effects of gravity, a century for them (subjectively speaking) is only a few scant minutes of our own time. Nevertheless, Forward's book culminates in contact between these two very different species, despite the enormous difference between them, as two storylines converge: one storyline concerning humanity's attempts to reach the neutron star (which is passing through our solar system) and study it, and another storyline concerning the cheela's development from neutron-star savages to hyper-advanced beings.
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Picture the world, some years from now, under the effects of an encroaching ice age. Public opinion has turned violently against scientists and science in all forms, believing them to be responsible somehow for the inexorable spread of the polar ice sheets. A small orbital community is left stranded as support for space research dwindles to nothing, and they must survive by their own devices or not at all. When two members of a routine flight to gather air from the upper atmosphere are shot down and crash on the North American ice sheet, survival seems impossible. Their only hope is a group of eccentric and disorganised science fiction fans who must evade the authorities and somehow return the astronauts to orbit. In what seems to be a tribute to the often weird and wonderful world of SF fandom, Niven et al. weave a believable and tense story. Very enjoyeable (although the fan jargon can often be confusing).
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From an Oxfordshire air base, Wellington bombers fly missions into Germany. Only a handful of crews have survived the war long enough to become experienced. Peter Marshall is captain of one crew. When he falls in love with Gervase, her rebuff nearly costs him his concentration and life. Their relationship blossoms when he has only five more missions to go. As they tick by, tension mounts. |
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Koontz (Forever Odd) is likely to have himself another bestseller in this pulse-pounding thriller with echoes of Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich. One morning, Southern California gardener Mitchell Rafferty gets a call on his cellphone from a stranger saying that Mitch's beloved wife, Holly, has been kidnapped and that he has less than three days to come up with $2 million in cash. Of course, he's warned not to involve the police. While Mitch is still on the phone, the kidnapper proves his seriousness by directing Mitch's attention to a man walking a dog across the street. A moment later the man is shot dead.
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Audrey Niffenegger - Time Traveler's Wife |
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Robert Heilein - Stranger in a Strange Land |
In
the near future the Envoy becomes the first ship on Mars with
human passengers- four married couples. It abruptly loses
contact with Earth, a Third World War ensues and twenty-five
years pass before another Earth expedition- the Champion - makes
it to the Red Planet. It turns out there was one survivor from
the Envoy - the child of an adulterous union who was raised by
the Martians as one of them. He is Valentine Michael Smith - or
Mike. While human in appearance he is alien in outlook. The
scenes of his return to Earth, adjustment to higher gravity and
human media, seem very realistic and well done. He quickly
becomes a ward of the world government because global law
decrees him a sovereign nation and the lawful ‘owner’ of Mars-
making him potentially the richest, most powerful human in
history. Yet, Mike is child-like and a pawn of the world
government led by Secretary General Joseph Douglas. He elicits
sympathy from his nurse- Jill Boardman- and her reporter
boyfriend Ben Caxton, who plot to smuggle him out of government
control. Before they can be successful Ben ‘disappears’ (at
government behest) and Jill - bonded with Mike by water-sharing
(becoming his water brother) - effects the escape alone. |
 Alferd Bester - The Stars my Destination |
The Stars My Destination
is, in one sense, a
science-fiction adaption of
Alexandre Dumas'
The Count of Monte Cristo.
It is the study of a man
completely lacking in
imagination or ambition,
Gulliver Foyle. Fate transforms
"Gully" Foyle in an instant;
shipwrecked in space, then
abandoned by a passing luxury
liner, Foyle becomes a
monomaniacal and sophisticated
monster bent upon revenge.
Wearing many masks, learning
many skills, this "worthless"
man pursues his goals
relentlessly; no price is too
high to pay.
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In the year 2489 C.E.[1], Terran spaceship Streaker — crewed by 150 uplifted dolphins, seven humans, and one uplifted chimpanzee — discovers a derelict fleet of 50,000 spaceships the size of small moons in a shallow cluster. They appear to belong to the Progenitors, the legendary "first race" which uplifted the other species. The captain's gig is sent to investigate but is destroyed along with one of the derelict craft — killing 10 crew members. Streaker manages to recover some artifacts from the destroyed derelict and one well-preserved alien body. The crew of Streaker uses psi-cast to inform Earth of their discovery and to send a hologram of the alien. When Streaker receives a reply, it is in code. Decrypted, it says only: “Go into hiding. Await Orders. Do not reply.” Attempting to comply, Streaker is ambushed at the Morgran transfer point and pursued by opposing fleets of fanatical alien races — all of them wanting the cluster co-ordinates, and all of them desperate to prevent their enemies from getting them. |
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