It takes a certain kind of skill to write a boring book about a character like Zorro, and apparently, Isabel Allende possesses such. It also takes a certain brashness to pronounce your protagonist as “fun” in the first paragraph–and several times following that–and then fail to produce any real evidence of it.
I was excited about the prospect of this book–a great pulp hero like Zorro in the hands of someone with Allende’s lit cred? It’d have to be great, right?
It took maybe 20-30 pages to disabuse me of that idea. Allende’s narrator sets out to tell the origins of Zorro–starting with events years before his parents met, and then proceeds at the pace (and in a style) fit for a medium-sized biography. We’re less than 60 pages from the end before a 20-something Don Diego de la Vega returns from Spain to California and begins his career as America’s first superhero in earnest. This would be something like making the audience sit through 90 minutes of Aaron Smolinski and Jeff East working on the farm with Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter before Christopher Reeve catches Margot Kidder and the helicopter (and then foils Lex Luthor’s big nuclear missile into the San Andreas fault/real estate scam in 15 minutes).
Again, it read like a biography, and an unimaginatively written one at that. He did this and then he did that. He was this adjective, and was that often. Over and over and over–no showing, plenty of telling. For a couple of paragraphs on either side of a section of his life/escapades, the narrator would break in with a little commentary and bordered on developing an engaging voice, but that would disappear within a page. It had to be the slowest 390 page book I’ve read in years–I kept at it, waiting for her to pull it around once the setup was finished. What a mistake. Save yourself from following in my footsteps.
Victoria Jurgen is an honor student, a budding photographer with a heck of an eye, a social misfit, a movie geek (there’s a correlation of the two), who’s nicknamed herself after a SciFi movie character. All this makes her (a goal for her, a criticism for her mother) “boy proof.” 
Naturally, after 
– I’ve read all but one or two of Buckley’s novels, and it’s fair to say he’s my favorite satirist. In 
– The latest (last?) installment in the Leo Waterman series, is definitely the darkest. About half-way through this novel Leo stops going about this the way he normally does and instead assembles a team of criminals to start a major sting/blackmail operation. It bugged me while reading it, and by the time it was over, it bugged me a lot. I can’t really put my finger on it, but it didn’t feel like Leo, more like one of Spenser’s weaker escapades. The romantic subplot really worked for me, as did the b-plot with the runaway, but the A-plot…eh. I really hope that Ford gets back to this series so I can see how he’s going to take things with Leo’s love life–part of me is glad to see him risking the status quo; but the other part of me really likes Rebecca as a character, and I’d rather see more of her than less. But mostly I want to see if Ford continues to take this series in the darker direction this novel heads down (and his newer series seems to take), or if he lets Leo return to being Leo. Personally, I hope he takes the latter route–I miss the fun Elvis Cole (not that I totally mind the darker Elvis), don’t want to lose the fun Leo, too.
– I really wanted to like this book–DeLillo’s one of my favorites. But this thing? Blah. This is DeLillo’s take on 9/11 and the aftermath. The scenes about the protagonist leaving the scene of the WTC attacks, and those showing how his son and his friends are reatcing to the attacks–those are really well done. And there were sentences, or paragraphs, that were great to read. But on the whole, this was a dreary novel, about dreary people reacting to horror in a dreary way. Worst thing I’ve read by him–which is strange, as many critics hail it as one of his best–who knows, maybe bluewoad’s rubbing off on me.
– Tropper delivers yet another fun novel about a young man dealing with death (and how often can you say that?). This time, Tropper’s protag married an older woman with a teenage son. A plane crash cuts short their life together and now the widower has to put his life without her together. Of course, the teenage son is a complication that he’s not ready for. Tropper’s characters frequently have a strong woman character as friend/love interest (no matter how taboo). This time a twin sister takes care of the friend part of the equation–and is one of the more interesting characters he’s created. The quirky disfunctional family is along for the ride–the father, of course, being the most screwed up (not that mom is that together). Tropper doesn’t miss a beat, hit a wrong note, or flub the rhythm once in this book. Charming, funny, bleak, and hopeful. Probably his best work to date.
– Wilson proves that you don’t have to be named J. K. Rowling to write children’s fiction that’s worth reading if you’re over 13. Good, imaginative, adventure story. Wilson’s got a natural (genetic?) way with words, that he’s honed well–would likely be a pleasure to read even if the plot and characters were weak.
– This one’s a “Young Adult” novel, which again, puts me out of the target audience. Ooops. Actually, I think the target is teenage girls, so I’m really out of the target. Really don’t care. Meyer can tell a story. Even if the story is an implausible love story about a loner teen girl and a vampire whose Byronic personality is on loan from a Bronte novel. Probably one of the better vampire novels I’ve read (and I seem to be reading a lot of them lately for no apparent reason).
I know the feeling.
As Chandler Bing once said, “I feel violated. And not in a good way.”