Book Review: The Institute

The Institute, By Stephen King

The beginning of this book is wonderful, if a bit drawn out. It's the backstory of a guy who will return later in the tale, and you just know he's gonna be a good guy.

Then we hear about the Institute, a dark and shadowy (we never really learn) ... company? ... government entity? ... military operation? ... that kidnaps children for its own nefarious reasons. And we meet Luke Ellis, a 12-year-old genius from the Twin Cities, who is about to start attending MIT in Cambridge and nearby Emerson College in Boston to pursue separate degrees simultaneously. In a rare trope reversal, Luke is emotionally well adjusted and has perfect vision, without the need for dorky glasses. But Luke does have one outstanding characteristic -- a mild form of telekinesis, which means he sometimes can move things around by thinking about it. He's not great at it, but that could change.

Luke is kidnapped and taken to the Institute, where he meets and befriends the kids -- Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and others -- already there, who fill him in as best they can on what is going down. All of them are subjected to various physical and mental tests -- Stasi Lights, shots for dots, the kids call some of them -- for unknown reasons. Sometimes, the kids disappear to the Back Half of the building, but we are told little about that.

But about halfway through, things start to get thrillery, as the good guys and the bad guys run and chase the other. Kings displays some great writing, as usual, even when you feel a need to roll your eyes at some of the plot twists. He also depends on stereotypes -- even as he delights in pointing out some of his anti-stereotypes.

Slotting The Institute in the final place
 on the bottom shelf of my SK bookcase.

For instance, during a gun battle in a small southern town, residents come out of their houses, all carrying guns, and they know how to use them. "This is the South," they said.

And this King story continues to dabble in various conspiracy theories about the government, businesses, and the people -- although no one knows exactly who they are -- who are really running the country and controlling the world.

All in all, it's a basic King book. Not his best, and far from his worst. It has good writing -- if a bit overdone. It has decent characters, if a bit lazily developed. And it has a fine story -- even if you have sneaking suspicion that King wrote parts of it for his other books.

Book Review: The Woman Who Died A Lot

The Woman Who Died a Lot, by Jasper Fforde

This is Jasper Fforde at his best and his worst.

The writing is witty and wonderful. The story arcs are wild and unpredictable. The characters are well-drawn and seem exceedingly normal is an unnatural world.



The plot, is, well, bizarrely Ffordeian

This is book seven in the Thursday Next/Bookworld series. I've read them all, but my mistake was finding book number six, One of  Our Thursdays is Missing, and reading it first. That was a long time ago, and over the years, have read them in order. So I had a background before cracking this one open.

In some ways, it's a little too much Fforde. The plot is all over the place. So much is going on that trying to determine what is happening at any given moment is a special challenge. It's just better to let it all ride. Let me try to sort it out.

Thursday Next is home recuperating, in a forced retirement, after an assassination attempt at the end of the last book. But Thursday doesn't taken lying down lying down. God, now known as the one and only Global Diety, has come out of hiding and has been smiting towns (because he can). Thursday's hometown of Swindon is next on his list, so her daughter, Tuesday, a young scientific genius, is preparing an anti-smiting shield that may or may not work. (It depends on something called the Unentanglement Constant.) Thursday's son, Friday, has lost out on his future job as head of the force that polices time-travel because travelers to the future discover that time travel is impossible. Friday also knows he is destined to murder someone within a week and thus will spend most of his future in prison.

Meanwhile, lots of synthetic Thursdays keep showing up and replacing her. Also meanwhile, representatives of Goliath -- the company that either runs everything in this world or wants to -- keeps stealing obscure 13th century manuscripts. Thursday, in her prestigious (really) new job as chief librarian of Swindon's All-You-Can-Eat at Fatso's Drink Not Included Library, meets one of the thieves, Jack Schitt -- her nemesis throughout this seven-book series -- in her office. It leads to this conversation:

"'We don't often see any Goliath high-fliers in Swindon,' I added. 'What position are you on the ladder these days?'

'Ninety-one. The corporation rewards loyalty.'

'So? Starbucks rewards loyalty -- and they're not out to take over the world. Okay, that was a bad example. Tesco's rewards loyalty, and they're not out to ... Okay, that's a bad example, too. But you know what I mean.'"

Such is an example of the Welsh author's off-beat sense of humor. Here's another: Angry God's smiting of Swindon will center on the town cathedral. The City Council wonders how it will be replaced: "'The price of cathedrals is simply shocking these days, and insurance is impossible, as you know.' 'The "Act of God" clause?' 'Right'"

The town also takes its libraries seriously. Libraries have their own police forces, and the uniform includes combat fatigues, "replete with the distinctive camouflage pattern of book spines for blending into library spaces." Its chief in Swindon begged Thursday to sanction pre-dawn raids to collect on overdue books.

Like I said, sometimes a bit overdone. But don't worry. Fforde wraps things up nicely, although I am not sure if the series is ending -- this book was published in 2012, and Fforde has gone on to other books.

But you never know.

This Week in Books, 8th Ed.

Rambling through a bookstore

One of the joys of wandering among the shelves of an old bookstore is a lack of people. Oh, perhaps you see the occasional fellow book fiend studying the titles, but for the most part you are alone with your thoughts and your fictional friends.

Then there is the Book Loft of German Village, a rambling independent bookstore in neighborhood near downtown Columbus, Ohio.

The entrance to the Book Loft

The stacks of fiction
 along a narrow hallway

A staircase lined
 with promotional photos

Most bookstores are large and airy, inside one large room. This one is not.

Many bookstores -- especially those of the chain variety -- are enclosed in modern glass and steel. This one does not fit that description.

They are in suburban shopping malls, surrounded by large parking lots. Usually, you'll find similar stores in similar buildings nearby -- a Panera, an office supply store, and most likely a Starbucks.

But the Book Loft is tucked away in an urban neighborhood. The entrance is a garden, and the store itself resembles a bunch of older homes that were renovated and smashed together. Yes, there is a coffee shop next door, which is part of a small, local chain, Stauf's Coffee.

The Book Loft boasts 32 rooms. Outside are tables full of books on sale, along with the racks of remainders. I arrived with my daughter in the early afternoon on a sunny weekend, when the Ohio State Buckeyes were thankfully playing out of town -- the university and the 100,000-seat stadium is about five miles away along city streets.

So after a vegan lunch, we made our way over, entered through the garden gate, and strolled up the walk.  It's a wonderful place, with surprises up every flight of stairs and around every corner. Each room has a theme, but you are likely to find random stacks of books in random places, so you have to meander all over the place, just in case you might miss something.

The fiction section takes up several rooms, and arranged along narrow hallways lined with bookcases. I found several novels that just came out, one that isn't scheduled to come out until next month (I said nothing, and bought it), and a sports book I've been seeking for a while.

Last Night in Montreal, by Emily St. John Mandel. Because I read Station Eleven and loved it.

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin. It asks the question, how would you live if you knew the day you would die. Sounded intriguing.

On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas. The story of a young black girl who really wants -- needs -- to become a rap star. It's been on the TBR list for a while.

After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the '69 Mets, by Art Shamsky. The Mets. 1969. 'nuff said.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. Doesn't everyone want to read this?

Akin, by Emma Donaghue. Another of my favorite writers, and I mistakenly thought it wasn't due out until next month, so it was a bonus when I saw it.

The Institute, by Stephen King. He has his own bookcase -- not just a mere bookshelf -- in my library.

Book Review: Middlegame

Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire

At the start of this strange and wonderful book, Roger Middleton, then a young boy who already is a language expert, refers to the word play in a novel as a "meet-a-for." He explains to his new friend, "It's using a thing that's not true to talk about things that are."

Such is a good description for this novel, a combination of science fiction, fantasy, and perhaps a bit of horror thrown in. It also alludes to a vast array of myths, legends, literature, and science, from the Wizard of Oz to quantum entanglement.

The premise of the book is complicated. A fellow by the name of James Reed -- who leads a band of modern alchemists -- wants to bring out the humanity of something called he Doctrine. What the Doctrine is, or is meant to be, is unclear, although it appears to be a perfection of society.

But in bringing it about, Reed needs a perfect pair of siblings. So he creates several sets of twins, then splits them apart. And by create, I mean literally -- he takes parts of various people to form another human. By doing this, he hopes the twins will manifest into one, and become the embodiment of the doctrine.

One of the twins, in this case, Roger, is a language expert. The second -- Dodger Cheswich -- is a math wizard. (And yes, the names of the twins, dubbed as "cuckoos," always rhyme. Almost.) Together, they represent order and chaos.

The math children will die to defend the language children. Many of them have. Most of them will have no capacity for defending themselves. It isn't part of what they are made of -- and Leigh knows very well what they're made of. She was one of the people who did the making, after all.

McGuire, who sadly was unknown to me before this book,  has had a long and varied career as a writer, artist, and singer. She puts it all to use here.

Often, I found that she mimics the best of Stephen King, one of my favorite authors. This is neither a knock or a comparison. But what I like about King, I enjoyed about this book. McGuire creates a few, solid major characters who are unique and well developed. These characters are the sun of the story, the epicenter of which the rest of the system revolves.

She also describes various secondary and tertiary characters, who despite their lesser story arcs are well defined, complete, and fulfill their roles as either good and evil -- or possibly both, and sometimes changing between the two. Other times, a character is introduced to set part of the story in motion, but she is also given a full life and description.

McGuire is clearly a star in her own right, and an author who I plan to read more of going forward.

Book Review: Wife of the Gods

Wife of the Gods, by Kwei Quartey

This is your basic detective novel, set in the west African nation of Ghana. The former makes it meh. The latter makes it worth reading -- at least for an old white guy in America, whose knowledge of African culture is, shall we say, lacking.

Now, I won't pretend this made me an expert on Ghanaian ways. But it did teach me a few things, left me wanting more, and, in the end, told a decent story.

The story introduces us to Darko Dawson, an inspector detective with the Ghanaian police, who lives and works in the capital city of Accra. He's a typical fictional detective -- good at his jobs, but with quirks and some personal problems. Dawson's quirks and problems include a quickness to violence, a fondness for smoking marijuana, a mother who mysteriously disappeared while he was still a child, and a son with a heart disease. All of these become plot-points in the book.

Ghana, on the Gulf of Guinea, is outlined in red.

The story starts with the finding of the body of a young female AIDS worker in the fictional town of Ketanu, in the Volta Region in the east of Ghana. Dawson has a connection with the area -- he grew up there, and speaks the local dialect. So the police detective is sent to investigate the potential homicide.

But his visit there is not with problems -- he doesn't like leaving his wife and young son. The assignment seems like a punishment of some kind -- and he must deal with family issues left over from his youth. And while he knows the area, he has problems with the local police chief, and with the fetish priests -- local religious leaders who actions seem more self-serving than providing for their flock. They often act like and portray themselves as gods, and have many wives, often young girls who have been awarded to the priests for various reasons.

The book explores all these issues, dealing with local and tribal customs, and with the very nature of religion and the men who use it to dominate others. It's a common enough issue that we see all around us, no matter where we live.

The problems and the solutions are universal, although the details are African.