5 Stars for Lyndsay Fayes's Gods of Gotham

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye is an extraordinary read. Highly recommended by a good friend, this book turned my friend into a great one. Great friendships are certainly underlined with books like The Gods of Gotham.

On the surface, this book is a mystery for murder, but beneath the many layers of plot, motive, red herrings, and need of justice this book is a journey for the hero, one in which he discovers a little hero in himself despite some heartbreaking circumstance. I fell in love with Timothy Wilde, the narrator of the novel. Cut raw in bland honesty, he came away from the ugliness and beauty of 1849 New York with humility and forgiveness. The characters around him drawn equally in weight only added to his characterization, especially his brother, Val, a foil in every way. So, when the book showed Val's softer side, shock knocked me as hard as it did Timothy.

Setting the characters aside, the setting breathed authenticity through every sense even the sixth one. The scene opening up to the murders and graves are especially heartbreaking without pestering a reader with gruesome images that linger, no Faye left me with something deeper probing my very humanity about the wrongness in murder.

Setting the beautiful descriptives aside, and recalling the mystery, Wilde revealed the culprit(s) in a twisted probable scenario that lead to shocking, complicated truths. I highly recommend this book to mystery lovers, but also to those who enjoy a character driven novel bent upon truth and justice and not abstractly.

5 Stars for Purgatorio by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri

Upon setting out to read Purgatorio by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri, (with cliff notes, end notes and google) I realized much of it didn't come together, so I took a step back after reading and picked up the BBC version of The Divine Comedy. I suppose one has to go through Hell to get to Heaven, and this is what I did in my journey to understand this fantastical beast breathing fire, redemption and ultimate humility and grace inside a long narrative poem.

Inferno made me sympathize heavily with Virgil, whereas Purgatorio expected me to already understand why he came to reside in Hell.  The fourth circle of Hell paralleled strongly with Dante's darkness inside himself contemplating darker choices. Although every soul coming in contact with Dante saw his breath, and saw he still lived. It was the realms like pride, anger and hopelessness that drew me towards Dante's humanity which came in contact with my own.

Paradiso detailed the art of both Inferno and Purgatorio answering questions of hope, faith and ultimately love. The abstract became concrete in God's light and some Italian opera sounding overwhelmingly angelic. It is a beautiful poem with images both horrific and impressionistic. In the end, there seemed to be two ways to view it: 1. literally 2. as a sermon of ethics and morality. I think I took a little of both, and will be revisiting this poem for years to come.

Five Stars for the show NOS4A2

NOS4A2 is one of the best tv series shows I've watched in a long time. It is certainly not average. First, it is not often a show can make the pay off the book does. I read NOS4A2 several years ago and the concept, plot detail and strength of the female lead blew me away.

After watching the first three episodes of this series, I am in awe once more plus the tv series offers up a few sympathy cards for good and evil that were not present in the book adding to unbelievable characterization.

Every character in the series is completely flushed out, and I don't mean solely through their past, but also the actions of their present and all the neat mannerisms drawn in their favor.

The lead protagonist may be a young Jennifer Lawrence. She possesses all the subtle nuances to create both sympathy and respect. Zachary Quinto playing Charlie has the seductive charm every great villain should possess. I look at him and think Joker/Hannibal/Master Vampire from the book Salem's Lot. He's scary - real scary, remember Quinto in American Horror Story. Besides being scary with a fantastic cast, this is a great concept pushed and sewn together with a Singer and believe me I am singing praises. I cannot wait to see the rest of the season.

4 Stars for Sleeping Beauty

As far as concept goes, Stephen King will not disappoint. Sleeping Beauties by both Kings, Stephen and his son, Owen is not an exception. The story is not one especially horrifying, but more mystifying posing questions like: 1. What would happen if all the women in the world fell asleep inside a butterfly-like cocoon that posed deadly consequences if removed. 2. What would happen to all the men in the world if there were no women? 3. What would happen in a world of women without men?

Focused in a small Appalachia region in an impoverished town, a psychologist, and a sheriff fight to protect a possible cure (a woman named Eve Black) to the sleeping disease known as Aurora - the disease stealing women and maybe saving the world and beginning it again. And now, this poses another question: Is Aurora something that needs to be cured? By the end of the novel, this might be a question best left for the reader to decide.

Because of the clever concept, fleshing out the characters boiled down to the deflowering of only one onion, the person left to decide the fate of all women. The Kings did a good job of peeling that particular onion; however, there were too many other characters. I could not cling to any of them with the exception of the chief decision maker.

Plot spun itself unraveling to a satisfying ending, but leaving an intricate, ambiguous web. My biggest question being: Who was/is Eve Black? There was certainly a lot of speculation including allusion from Mercutio's famous Queen Mab speech in Romeo and Juliet. Queen Mab is a fairy playing pranks in the minds of her sleeping victims. There is also the choice of a name, Eve, another possible allusion to the Bible's first woman. The idea of her true identity being left to ponder did not bother me because the theories felt like a swirl of rainbow cotton candy turning sugar sweet in my mouth. In the end, who Eve Black is/was did not matter because the fate of all women rested on one.

In addition, I found the idea of two men writing a book analyzing the psychology of a woman's mind refreshing. Refreshing because it was filled with understanding, compassion, and the humility it takes for men and women to live together without some strange unnecessary power struggle.

I recommend the King books not only for story and concept, but for the clairvoyance it takes to understand the human condition in the mind of a woman. Joe Hill, Stephen King's other son, does this as well. I recently had the pleasure of viewing the first three episodes of his NOS4A2 on AMC with a young strong female protagonist. I read the book, NOS4A2 several years ago, and enjoyed it enough to read it in four days. I posted a review here in favor of this book and posted a review on my blog for the new AMC series show, because after all this is a book site not a film site.

Go out and read a King/Hill novel today!