The Shining Girls

On the surface, this book had many things that I love: A psychopath. Time travel. A May-December romance (Harrison Ford I still love you bb). Sophisticated 1920s era lesbians. Etc, etc.

And...yet. The sum is less than its parts. I've read some of Beukes' previous novels, and she certainly has a real knack for imaginative plot devices and world-building. In this story of one man sowing murder and madness through the decades via a time-portal in an old house, I wasn't bothered by the fact that the hows and whys of the time travel wasn't explained. The creaky old house with the boarded up windows, full of treasures the killer has stolen from his "shining girls," was creepy and evocative enough for me - I didn't need that bogged down with a "scientific" explanation of how the villain skipped through the years and found his victims. But what I can't excuse is the lack of motive, or really any depth of characterization, in his character. He's barely more than a sketch - and as a result a lot of what he does feels completely random. Is he a drunk? Was he abused? Just insane? A misogynist? An opportunist? What the hell is his story, and why do I care?

The heroine, Kirby, is slightly more fleshed out. However, I still didn't find her very compelling. Also I hate the name Kirby. Sorry, Kirby. Her boss/mentor/love interest was equally mild. I kept picturing him in those sad dad sweaters, which didn't help (You know: a chunky textured knit, maybe in a forest green. The sweater equivalent of that 'wommp wommp' sound).

Funnily enough, the characters that stood out the most to me were the "shining girls" that are stalked and murdered in short interstitial chapters. From different eras, with different struggles - in those concise sections their lives are richly imagined. The killer is drawn to them because of their potential, which seems to "shine" from them - and the writing certainly reflects this. Too bad the rest of the book had to suffer.

2 unlicensed haruspices* out of 5.

*Look it up, dummy.

Congo

Emboldened by my enjoyable revisit to Jurassic Park & the Lost World, I thought I’d pick up another Crichton novel I barely remembered but knew I’d read in my early teens. Foolish, foolish, Jane. This. Book. Is. Bananas.*The plot DID give me some great ideas for band names though:

• Corporate Jungle Heist
• Parachuting Gorilla
• Killer Police Apes
• Gorilla Ticklers
• Stone Skull Crushers
• Amy & The Blue Diamonds
• The Japanese Consortium

Sure, there is some action when the aforementioned killer police apes start busting out the aforementioned stone skull crushers, but mostly the book is concerned with how one company is going to beat another company to a source of rocks that will make computers faster. There are a lot of sentences that begin “Karen had to upload the data to the satellite uplink to get the new probability for the desired outcome.” Nerds, do NOT tell me if I got that wrong.

So unless you like reading a lot about old technology, just see the movie. Or, don’t – because apparently it’s also pretty bad (Amy the Talking Gorilla was nominated for worst supporting actress and LOST TO MADONNA. BRB going to be laughing about Madge being worse to watch than this for awhile).  

1 out of 5 playtime sessions with All Ball & Koko.

*Um, YEAH pun intended. Are you new here?

Jurassic Park & The Lost World: A Dinosaur Twofer

Jurassic Park might be the movie I have seen the most. I was 10 when it came out, and my dad took my brothers & me to see it and then hid in a bush on the way home and jumped out and scared us. Great parenting, Dad! Dr. Alan Grant was one of my first crushes (don’t panic, Indiana Jones-era Harrison Ford – you’ll always be #1. Apparently I like gruff older men who are frequently exasperated while wearing dusty fedoras....Paging Dr. Freud!). We got a VHS tape of the movie and played it every single day after school. My family quotes it constantly (Mom: “Finish your dinner.” Me: “Now you will eventually have DINOSAURS, on your dinosaur tour? Hmm?” Mom: *Cries silently and wonders where she went wrong*). I just had my bachelorette party and my bridesmaid designed Jurassic Park themed t-shirts for us all to wear, and, spoiler alert: my bridesmaids are going to walk down the aisle to the theme song (What? It’s PRETTY).

So when the movie was re-released in 3D IMAX, I was psyched to see it on the big screen again. It did not disappoint! Haters to the left. My mom says I read the book when it came out, which would have made me 7 (?!). Did I understand ANYTHING ABOUT IT? What a weird kid. Anyway, 20 years later, enthralled once again, I decided to re-read the book and the sequel, The Lost World.

Lessons learned:

• Movie Alan Grant is way better than book Alan Grant. Book Dr. Grant actually LIKES children. Terrible. 
• There's an awesome T.Rex river chase that never made it to the big screen - probably because actually seeing the T.Rex dog paddling makes it look cute instead of scary? Too bad.
• The book is less scary, though, overall. My theory is that dinosaur names are too nerdy on the page: "The dilophosaurus attacked!" Oooooh I'm sooooo scaaaaared. "The razor teeth terror beast attacked!" *shits pants, cries, puts book in freezer*
• In both the novel & the book, Ellie is the coolest and consistently shows the men in the room what the hell is up.  I want to be a paleobotanist!*
• The Lost World is pretty much just Jurassic Park, again, on a different island. NOT COMPLAINING.
• Michael Crichton can't write children - the ones in both books are one-dimensional plot devices. "Oh no we've lost little Billy! Time to move from plot point A to B!" And scene.

I am regretting reviewing these books. They're neither bad, nor good - they simply are (Jurassic Park). Okay, they're probably not great - but they are a million times better than anything Dan Brown ever wrote, paleontogists > symbologists 4EVA. 

Jurassic Park: 4 Dodgson's out of 5.

The Lost World: 3 Goldblum cackles out of 5.

*You're right - I just want to look good in short shorts. 

Lightning

Oh, Dean. What cruel twist of fate engineered the fact that you would be constantly preceded by Stephen King on the library shelves, forever doomed to be following in his footsteps in alphabetization as in life? Still, my brothers and I devoured all your books as teenagers*, so maybe you're better thought of as a gentle "intro to" dark adult fiction instead of a poor man's version of weightier author.

Anyway, you're a millionaire and churn out about a dozen books a year and I can barely do one review a month, so pretty sure you're doing alright.

Lightning was one of the first Koontzy's I read, and his tale of a love-struck time-traveling Nazi defector scientist held me in its thrall. I was going to re-read it but I'd rather review it from the perspective of an awkward teen than a confident and savvy adult (I am trying to incorporate my daily affirmations into these reviews. I can feel them working!). So, as a 90s teen, I cannot recommend this book enough and I really look forward to the movie adaptation, coming out in July 1999, starring Val Kilmer.

90s teen rating: 5 The Saint-era Val Kilmers out of 5. Suspected current Jane rating: 2 beach-ready Val Kilmers out of 5.

 *and we also had a weird obsession with the evolution of your author pic - in earlier editions, you had a mustache worthy of the Brawny Man and a receding hairline; in later ones, you were clean shaven but suspiciously thick-coiffed. This led to an attempt to speculate on your wikipedia page about a frenzied late-night mustache-to-pate home hair transplant, which remained in your entry for one tantalizing day before being edited into oblivion.

Dead Until Dark & Living Dead in Dallas

Sooooookay. Suh-kay. Suh-kaaaay. And Beeeel. Biiiilllll. Beee-luh? Lesson learned: it's hard to write in a Southern accent. So if you get annoyed watching True Blood and hearing Sookie & Bill dramatically call for each other, you might do better with the Charlaine Harris books the show is based on. However, although, take into account, the flip-side: there aren't enough adjectives in the English language to properly convey the glory of Alexander Skarsgard's giant, Swedish, and often nude form. So what will it be: brain candy books sans scenery-chewing or brain-candy HDTV with all its perks? I guess you can have both; you were never going to read War & Peace anyway.

3.5 Viking butts out of 5.

Ravens

Airport book. About a 2 hour flight long. Definitely requires the old imagination to stretttttch a bit at times, but I kept turning those pages. The basic premise is a dysfunctional family in a small town wins the mega mega mega millions, and some drifters (or grifters? I wouldn't want to paint all drifters with the same brush, I'm sure there are nice ones out there) get wind of it and one of them decides to "encourage" the family to split their winnings with him. The problem with having a psychopath as one of your main characters is that the reader has to deal with pages of crazy ramblings. They get old. Still, some authors can handle it better than others, and this guy was able to edge things closer to the Stephen King end of the scale, as opposed to the Dean Koontz end.

3 psycho rambling monologues about God and destiny and evil out of 5.