The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry

(Image courtesy of Goodreads.com)

Blah. I was actually all set to do a VanDuinen Studio blog post this week, but that's going to have to wait a week. This book pissed me off so much that I have to write about it.

The Essex Serpent was an impulse grab in the "new" section of the Dexter District Library. I absolutely adored the cover art, and the blurb made the book sound just as interesting. Cora Seaborne is newly widowed and forever a natural sciences addict. She goes to a little coastal town in Essex to look for fossils, and instead stumbles upon the legend of the Essex serpent, which has supposedly resurfaced after decades in the deep. She meets a clergyman in the town of Aldwinter, and their friendship sets up a delightful religion vs. science debate that would've made a great novel, had the author actually continued that line of thinking. Instead, she drops that plot like a hot potato two-thirds of the way through, and the entire book devolves into a description of who is sleeping with who. Not at all what I was expecting, and frankly, pretty boring.

The more I sit and think about this book, the more I remember threads that were never resolved. A big one is the socialist who is fighting for decent low-income housing as a side-plot: she convinces several other characters to join in her fight, then accepts living with her boyfriend in a flat paid for (absurdly) by the man who wishes he were her boyfriend. The legislation she mentions in practically every conversation prior to the end is never voted on, as far as we know.

The Essex serpent itself is also heartily disappointing. There's a steady build-up throughout the first half - mysterious deaths, a girl with webbed fingers who seems to channel some of its energy, a dying woman who can hear it talking, copious amounts of fog. Well, all of that remains unexplained, because the "serpent" is really an overturned boat that finally washes to shore. (Normally I wouldn't ruin the ending in a book review, but I really don't recommend wasting your time on this one!) It felt like a ghost story that ends up resolved as a sheet caught in the wind - the kind of story I avoided as a child by searching in the non-fiction section for my ghosts.

Thankfully, I have several other books on deck. I can quickly forget this one, now that I have this rant out of my system. On to happier reading!

The Supernatural Enhancements - Edgar Cantero

I don't know if I've ever felt so divided in my opinion of a book by the time I finished it. Usually by that final page, I've been able to come to some type of conclusion! But The Supernatural Enhancements is in a league of its own in many ways.

I think I'll do a pro/con list for this one, since the sides are so evenly balanced.

Pros:

• The creep factor is definitely there. If you like creepy books, this one delivers. There's both mystery and gore involved, and the mystery was compelling enough to keep me focused past the gore.
• The two main characters are great. I thought Niamh especially was going to get annoying.  She's introduced as kind of an edgy quirk personified, so I highly doubted that she was going to be well-rounded enough to be readable. Thankfully, I was wrong, and her personality plays very nicely off of the narrator's. They're an amusing and enjoyable pair.
• Speaking of humor...The whole book is funny. If you have a macabre sense of humor (like I do), you'll definitely get a kick out of this one.

Cons:

• There's too much going on. It's a haunted house story at first, then it morphs into a mystery, and finally a murder mystery. Cantero deftly keeps it all together and keeps all the pieces moving, but it's quite the roller coaster for the reader. I kept wishing the story would settle in and focus, but it never really does.
• Too much is expected of the reader. There are several instances where something clicks for the narrator, but it takes a while for the story to get back around and explain the piece that fell into place. I was under the impression that I was supposed to have made the connection at the same time as the narrator, but it was never fully clear which mystery was being solved at the time (see above: too much happening!). 
• The end is a little messy. Almost all of the loose ends are tied up by the end, but (without giving too much away) there are some escapees that make me think the author banished them because he didn't want to figure out how to deal with them more fully. It left the climax feeling rushed more than solved, which was a little disappointing.

All in all, I think it's worth a read. It goes quickly and it's a fun practice in mental gymnastics. It's also completely different from anything I've read before - even as an avid reader of supernatural-laden stories, I can't think of anything to compare it to that would give you a full picture. That being said, it  hasn't ended up on my list of all-time favorites, but obviously not every book will.

To the Bright Edge of the World - Eowyn Ivey

I am back with a book review! (Something something toddlers something something no time to read...) And what a book this was - I actually have a couple more in progress at the moment, but this was the first in a long while that made me make time to read it quickly. I felt like my old, pre-mom self again while reading this one, especially on the nights when I stayed up until 1:30 in the morning because I could not put it down. 🙀

A brief synopsis for context: As the hero of To the Bright Edge of the World, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester leads an Alaskan expedition (primarily on foot) from the mouth of the Wolverine River to Kulgadzi Lake, and then north to the Yukon River to catch a steamboat back home. His wife, Sophie Forrester, stays behind at their cabin in the Vancouver Barracks, where she occupies her mind and time learning photography. Her subject of choice is birds (a woman after my own heart), particularly nesting birds. The story is written as a compilation of historical documents, transcribed diaries, and photographs, all of which have been organized by a museum director in Alpine, Alaska. It's a great way to organize the text, especially because Ivey did so much research to write this novel. Even though it's fiction, it still feels like history coming alive at your fingertips - at one point I checked her map against Google Maps and got a little thrill from finding that all the landmarks are, in fact, real. I'm ready to pack a bag and see it myself!

I approached this book already predisposed to loving it, since The Snow Child earned a place forever in my heart a few years back. That being said, it's actually difficult to find much of a connection between the two books, other than Ivey's enviable mastery of the language. The one common thread I did pull out was the fantastical nature of the Alaskan wilderness; in fact, in this most recent book, the events tend more toward the supernatural the deeper the travelers get into unexplored territory. There's a really nice tension throughout between what the scientifically-minded Forrester is willing to believe and what he's actually seeing.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but I will say that it is so wonderfully human. I can't even categorize it as "good" or "bad," because it's so much of both blended together. It is an incredibly satisfying ending, which is the most important trait to me. I've officially started following Ivey on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads, because I want to know the minute she releases another book!

(Image from Goodreads.com)