Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie)

Okay, a confession: I'm hopelessly focused on gender. I learned this in reading this book,in which the narrator's (fictional) native language has no gender-marking and the character himself (herself?) is oblivious to gender. In this English translation, the default pronouns are all feminine, so we read that she drove the shuttle and her voice was loud, but some of these individuals are probably male. Which ones, though? I can't tell, and it drives me crazy! Aside from this personal foible of mine, though, there's a lot here to like. There's an interstellar empire run by an immortal tyrant who has her (his?) mind loaded into armies of clones, supported by an army including vast ships run by AIs and manned by ancillaries, former people whose minds have been subsumed into the ship's mind. The narrator is one of these ancillaries, and the story shifts back and forth between the past in which the ship was part of the takeover of a new world, and the present in which the ancillary is separated from the ship and working toward a goal of vital personal importance. We don't learn what the goal is, why it is important, or what happened to the rest of she ship for much of the book. I can't say that all became clear, but enough did to be satisfying, and the mystery was intriguing.

Pandemonium (Daryl Gregory)

I love how Gregory captures a sense of insanity framed by mundane reality. In the two books of his I read (this and Afterparty) the main character experiences what, in the real world, we would call hallucinations and delusions, but within their own warped world they make a slantwise kind of sense. Here, the narrator, Del, was one of thousands who have been at some point possessed by what people call demons: recognizable personalities who take over someone and cause them to act out the demon's archetypal story. At age 5, Del was possessed by one they call the Hellion, a force that chooses young tow-headed boys and sends them swinging from rafters and throwing spitballs, and has been dealing with the aftermath of that possession ever since. He winds up working with others to try to learn what the demons actually are and to rid himself, and the world, of their presence. It is a fascinating world peopled with intriguing characters, and the ending is poignant and difficult and real.

Peking to Paris (Dina Bennett)

This is the author's story of a 35-day road rally across Asia and Europe in 2007, made by over 100 classic cars duplicating a trip over much the same route in 1907. I enjoyed a lot of the details of what the trip was like, including experiences in crowded Chinese cities, vast Mongolian deserts, and frustrating Russian checkpoints. The ongoing saga of their car's inadequate shock absorbers was, forgive me, absorbing. I was less enthralled with the author's harping on her overly-fragile emotional state. She was upfront about admitting that slights she perceived from other rally members evoked the angst of her 13-year-old self; I was less likely to find this charming or enjoyable in an adult. I would have preferred to spend more time on the journey, less on her inner securities. I can say that I liked parts of it, but don't feel that my life was better in any way for having read it.

Killing Jesus (Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard)

I was glad to read this book because it painted a vivid picture of what life was like in the time of Jesus (sometimes too vivid, in the case of the excesses of some of the Roman leaders). If it had not called itself an accurate historical document I would have enjoyed it more, because it was so clearly elaborated beyond what history can tell us and bent to O'Reilly's own biases. I suppose I could forgive the statements about the weather on a particular day, or what Agrippa was thinking as he stood looking out a particular window, as unimportant attempts to bring the narrative to life. But when he describes how Mary gasped in shock at finding Jesus teaching at the temple at age 12, because he had never shown such an ability before, I am left wondering how he could possibly know this, and such unsupportable insight is rampant in the text. He also ignores a lot of biblical scholarship when he assumes, for instance, that the Gospels were actually written by the specific Apostles for which they were named, or that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. All together I found it an interesting book if one is careful not to take it too seriously, but I can't really recommend it.

Swamplandia! (Karen Russell)

Swamplandia! is a Florida tourist attraction featuring alligator wrestling and a family steeped in its own mythical history, fallen on hard times after the mother of the family dies and a slick tourist attraction on the mainland draws away all the customers. One by one the family members leave the island, each trying in some individual fashion to find a new future for them all. The author paints both the human drama of the family and the overwhelming, lazy explosion of life in the swamp with heartbreaking clarity. At times the story wanders a little far into the mists of unreality for my taste, and there was a certain distance from the experiences of the characters, even in the parts of the story told in first person from inside the experience of young Ava Bigtree. Still, I never stopped wanting to know what came next.

Frozen Heat (Richard Castle)

Sorry. I love the Castle TV show, and I am tickled at the joke of having the Nikki Heat novels actually published by "Richard Castle," but I don't actually want to read them. What is good fun on TV comes across as too formulaic as a novel. Oh, well.

Afterparty (Daryl Gregory)

I loved this science fiction story about a near-future world where everyone with a couple of bucks and an Internet connection can develop and produce their own designer drugs. A few years ago an enthusiastic group of young entrepreneurs in a budding start-up were working on something that they hoped would treat many of the ills that plague so many of us, and it went horribly wrong. The narrator of the story was one of the developers, and one of the initial victims, living out her life in a mental institution until she becomes convinced someone is recreating that drug and putting it out on the street again, and she goes on a mission to find out who is doing it and stop them. Her quest involves a Toronto drug cartel, an ex-spy, a dual-faced assassin, and a mixed crew of the folks from the original start-up. The writing is taut, the narrator's voice convincing and engaging, the action gripping, and most of all everything was clearly informed by the best thinking in  neuroscience. How could I not love it?