The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

I have love/hate feelings for this book, though I suppose the fact that I bought the next four titles in the series immediately upon finishing the story puts me a bit more on the side of "love" than "hate". It's one of those books that's best not given too much thought. It seems to be a cerebral, witty, thinking-person's story, but it can't really suceed on that level when there are so many holes in this logic and in the functioning of this fictional universe. Enjoy it on the surface, but don't dig for more. If you do, it'll fall apart. It's absurd and ridiculous and much too clever by half, but it's also sort of refreshing to read something so bizarre and to go along for the ride. In this way, I'm almost reminded of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. The heroine is quirky and plucky and has moxie. The stories are mysteries, yes, but all the action is incidental to the true focus - the telling of really tall tales. Though in this series, the true star seems to be the author ("Look how clever I am! Look, damn you!") rather than the actual protagonist, I'm still willing to keep going with the series and see what happens Next.

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory

I enjoyed this quite a bit, though not as much as The Other Boleyn Girl. I have two quibbles. First, I didn't like the changing tense of the story, with the bulk of the narrative in third-person followed by (usually) short italicized first-person insights by Queen Katherine. It's a hard trade-off between first-person and third-, but it is a trade. Taking both? Not okay. Too clumsy. Make a commitment. Second, I didn't buy the love affair between Katherine and Arthur. Or rather, I bought it in the moment, but not as a life-long motivator for everything that came after. The interplay between the two was fantastic and terribly tragic, and beautifully written throughout. But the marriage lasted less than six months (with half that time being estranged, according to the book), and she was fifteen years old. In the context of everything that comes before and after her brief marriage, I cannot see it as a sustained motivation for the thirty-five remaining years of her life. Still, it made Katherine of Aragon relevant to me in a way she never was before, bringing her sympathy and context that she's never had, in much the same way that she brought Anne Boleyn to life in the last. I will keep reading for sure.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

This was a complete guilty pleasure. Writing fiction about people who actually lived, in which they do all the things they actually did, is just one step away from the secret N'Sync stories scribbled in the notebooks of pre-teen fangirls and popslash fans the world over. Both are meticulously researched but still play fast and loose with the facts by ascribing emotional states and personal meanings and specific motivations to the outward events everyone already gets to see. Still, this is my kind of RPF crack, thankyouverymuch. It's got the Tudors and the sweeping brush of history and fate, and the glamour and the danger and I could just lick it up with a spoon. There were some parts (Mary's approach to child-rearing, for example) that seemed to be informed much more by modern sensibility than historical accuracy, but I was willing to handwave that in light of everything else that was good. Because everything that was good was very, very good indeed. All three of the main Boleyns - Mary, Anne, and brother George - came alive in this book like never before. I loved Anne. Scheming, brutal, viscious, scary-ass, crazy psycho Anne. She's never been full-color like this before, and I loved her to bits even while being more than a little afraid of her. I had this sitting on the shelf for quite some time, half-regretting the purchase and unsure if I was going to give it a whirl at all. I'm so glad I did, and will be checking out more of Philippa Gregory very soon.

A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George

It was nice to see a British mystery that actually involves investigating a mystery. Though there was still much more interpersonal stuff going on in this story, it was balanced with having detectives actually solve crime. A nice change of pace. Apparently, I don't like the British style of mystery stories, which makes my PD James hatred make a lot more sense - finally. Anyway, the odd couple pairing of detectives was really interesting, and Barbara was a particularly compelling character. Finley has a lot of layers to peel I'd guess, but Barbara's the one who breaks my heart. It's nice to see an author make a protagonist that's genuinely hideous and unlikeable, and I enjoy the novelty if nothing else. Still, I don't think I'll continue with the series, despite being vaguely curious about where the characters end up. Too much meandering, too much unpleasant interpersonal stuff for very little gain. It's not that I insist on a happy ending. God, no. I just like to see characters get a tiny bit of insight into their own messed up natures, or at least be able to recognize it even if (especially if) they're unable to change anything. It's one thing to accept messed up circumstances through some sort of misguided sense of nobility; quite another to live with them because that's all there is. The latter is just too depressing.

Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin

These people may very well be the worst cops of all time. The detectives are part of a huge task force chasing a serial killer, but everyone spends strangely little time detecting anything. They drink a lot of whiskey down the pub, they attend wild parties, they have casual hook-ups, they spend time resting up in hospital just to get a few days off; what they don't do is spend any time at all doing their jobs. They are hands down the most easily distracted and distractable police officers I've ever seen in a crime novel. And I'm just not sure what the point of any of it was, if there was one. No matter how personal, how tragic, how epic the events became, the protagonists still face each day with the same reluctant boredom as any other working stiff. At one point, at the climax of the novel, with family members dead and imperiled, hampered by a gunshot wound and hunting the killer in the next room, the detectives still find time for a little chat about how the roots of modern-day Edinburgh were laid atop the city of many years ago. It's not even relevant, it's just random, and they seem just as bored with it as with everything else. I've heard that the later novels in this series get better. Since there are currently sixteen of them, I believe that must be the case; my faith in humanity refuses to acknowledge that fifteen subsequent novels could be as terrible as this one and still be read so widely. Still, I won't be judging that firsthand. I gave it one shot, and found muddy storytelling, inconsistent characterization, and clunky dialogue. That's three for three, and I'm outta here.

Doctor Who: Winner Takes All by Jacqueline Rayner

Ha! What a turnaround from the last! I'm glad that I bought three of the novelized tie-ins at the same time, or I never would have dipped into this well again after the dreadful last outing. And that would have been a shame because this one is so.much.fun. It's wacky and fun and funny, and absolutely pitch-perfect. The author has an incredible ear for dialogue that reads as natural and in-character as it's possible to be. The story is absurd and out-of-left-field as all the best Who are, with joy and peril and danger and hijinks all rolled up into one messy ball of good times. I will definitely give the next round of books a try after this one.

Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole

Oh. My. God. This is one of the worst pieces of crap I've ever tried to read. I lasted 50 pages, and even that much was near-impossible. It's so terrible I hardly know where to begin to describe it. If I had to pick one, I'd say the worst part is that there's nothing of the Whovian sensibility anywhere to be found in these pages. Granted, I only lasted about 50 pages, but I think if it hadn't arrived by then, it wasn't coming. Instead, the main characters are completely inert. The story is all tell and no show, and absolutely lacking in the competence, glee , and bias for action that absolutely define the current Who and his plucky companion. The plot is tired, the characters are so far off base as to be unrecognizable, and the dialogue absolutely stinks. It feels like one of two things happened - either the author has never actually seen the show, or they took any random unpublished manuscript off the shelf and changed the names to Doctor and Rose to make it a Who. If it wasn't one of those, I have no guess what could have made things go so horribly wrong. And I had such high hopes.