By the Power of Greyskull… I Have the Micro-Reviews

Books

YA/MG fiction
The Girl of Fire and Thorns (***** – loved)
Leverage (***** – loved)

Adult fiction
Whispers Under Ground (***** – loved)
The Last Policeman: A Novel (**** – liked)
Redshirts (*** – enjoyed)
The Surgeon (**** – liked)

Adult non-fiction
Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (***** – loved)

TV
The Wire season 4 (****  –  liked)
The Wire season 5 (**** –  liked… ish)

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson (YA fantasy novel, 2011) – I’m loving the influx of YA adventure fantasy with female protagonists. So far, my favourite is this one starring Elisa, a princess who harbours a “Godstone” that marks her as an agent of Divine destiny. I love its world that suggests historical Spain; the organic and admirable growth of its main character; and the love interests who add to the story without taking it over.

Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen (YA novel, 2011) – Leverage is the powerful story of a high-school football star and an unpopular male gymnast whose paths cross when a horrific act of bullying has terrible consequences. The fast-paced writing and short chapters pull the reader along, and emotions run high. The ending does feel too pat, but overall, the book is satisfying.

Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch (fantasy/mystery novel, 2012) – This is the third awesome mystery starring Peter Grant, a (science geek + wizard’s apprentice + London constable) who investigates supernatural crimes. This installment sees weird murders in the Underground and the professional return of Peter’s colleague Leslie,  who’s dealing with an injury she sustained in a previous book. The Rivers of London series has fantastic plot and style, and you should check it out if you haven’t already.

The Last Policeman: A Novel by Ben H. Winters (science fiction/mystery novel, 2012) – As humanity prepares for the impact of a life-destroying asteroid, Detective Hank Palace doggedly follows the trail when he suspects the case his colleagues label a suicide was actually a murder. The mystery is played low-key, because part of the tension comes from wondering whether Palace is obsessively seeing crimes where there are none, but I still wished it was more exciting. I liked how this plot turned conventional detective stories on their heads: usually, we see the hero/heroine’s tenacity as something to admire, but The Last Policeman asks, “Don’t you see that there’s something wrong with this guy, who has literally months to live and commits them to destroying people’s lives?”

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi (science fiction novel, 2012) – This novel is to Star Trek what Cabin in the Woods is to horror movies: a loving meta-fictional parody.  I feel roughly the same way about the two. I enjoyed the humour and loved the ingenuity with which the main characters (the titular redshirts) decide how to fix the monumental unfairness of their universe, but the plot didn’t hook me.

The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen (thriller novel, 2002) – Full disclosure: I picked up this book because somewhere online I caught a whiff of the Rizzoli and Isles series and thought, Female mystery-solving partners? Sign me up! So I was slightly disappointed to find that this first book in the series features only Rizzoli. But the Gerritsen ratchets up the suspense on this race to find a misogynist serial killer, and I loved how the book uses multiple viewpoints to show how each character’s experience colours his or her perception of the case.

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy by Christopher Hayes (non-fiction book, 2012) – Hayes argues that the discontentment from the American grassroots movements of both the left and the right can be credited to a flawed meritocracy that allows those on top to cut off access to power to those on the bottom and suggests that the remedy is bipartisan collaboration to increase equality of outcome as well as equality of opportunity. My own bias is left-ish, so keep that in mind when I say that I thought this was an extraordinarily balanced view of American politics that managed disagreement with respect and clarity. I was pleasantly surprised to have ideas I’d taken for granted (e.g. meritocracy) challenged when it was appropriate to the topic at hand.

The Wire (season 4) by David Simon (TV series, 2006) – I really liked this season that in which ex-cop Prez becomes an elementary school teacher at an inner-city school. The concurrent plot that shows City Councillor Tommy Carcetti running for mayor didn’t engage me as much, but I enjoyed how the school story followed the very different lives of four boys who’d grown up together. The ending was upsetting in a good, deliberate way.

The Wire (season 5) by David Simon (TV series, 2008) – This season focuses on the press coverage of McNulty’s ridiculous scheme to fund investigation into Marlo’s drug empire, which I found too unbelievable. The acting and the writing were  still great, but the plot felt like someone cut one of the guy lines, and the balloon was starting to strain for the sky. Regardless,  I enjoyed seeing how all the characters had grown (or not) through the run of the show.