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Meidei Meidei meidei_es — Guhhhhhhh. I am pretty sad that I didn't like this book. I don't even really want to give it two stars. So basically -- I'm not sure what it was about. I sort of liked the Catholic flavored American-society bashing in the beginning but it never really ended. I sort of liked the sensual attitude of the main character (let's say he is clear about his various proclivities) and how this could even be related to his religious/societal/whatever convictions. But it was so messy - he was so crazy - and so much of what he said was so mean and I wasn't paying enough attention to appreciate the irony or half-truth of it or whatever because I think there may have been no damn plot to pay attention to. I really liked Lancelot, and I wonder if that was a combination of it having more of a plot and/or me being in an angrier, more misanthropic mindset. Catholic Southern Gothic craziness can only do so much for a lady. This did not do that much for me.

Oscar Zhang _scaraider — A page turning mystery told in alternating chapters. Chris and his best friend Win decide to set out after high school graduation for a cross country bike trip. The trip changes the boys, especially considering only one of them returns.

Shana Zucker szucker — I'm still in the process of reading this, but it is very engaging so far.

Troy Damien troydamienburgess — ** spoiler alert ** This is one of those books that I probably would have liked better if I hadn't gotten an idea about what I was reading halfway through, and then the narrative changed on me. So, in the world of the Twelve Kingdoms, divine creatures, kirin, are able to mystically sense the best person for ruler-ship and that person then becomes immortal and Heaven's chosen ruler of the kingdom. If the king is good at his (or her) job, the kingdom prospers. If the king is actually callous and cruel, the kingdom suffers, demons start showing up, and eventually the kirin gets sick and the king loses his or her immortality and dies, as the Mandate of Heaven passes from him/her, and the kirin (or a new one, if the kirin dies) has to choose a new king. This story follows Rokuta the kirin of En and Shoryu, the king of En. Both lived in Japan for periods of their lives -- Rokuta was abandoned as a child when wars meant that his foster parents couldn't feed him, and Shoryu used to be a warlord's son whose people were slaughtered by a rival. The story stars out with Shoryu attempting to patch up the kingdom after the previous king went crazy and started killing people (and insisting that his underlings impose his draconian polices or he'd kill them). The regent son-of-the-governor of one of the provinces, Atsuyu, is trying to get the king to delegate power to him to fix the levees before the fall floods, but Shoryu is still trying to clear house of all the previous administration's corruption. So Atsuyu kidnaps Rokuta and tries to use him to blackmail Shoryu into giving him power. Now, here was when I think that this is the possibility of having a protagonist and antagonist who are both right and decent people but stuck on opposite sides and cannot easily reconcile. Sadly, as Rokuta investigates, Atsuyu loses most of his virtuous appeal as a governor, which shows why he didn't attempt to seek out an actual appointed position. Turns out, he just wanted power, while Shoryu wanted a kingdom to make peoples' lives better, so it ended up being a more straightforward story, with a bit of cleverness in Shoryu's use of his limited resources. One thing I liked was Shoryu mentioning how powerful the idea of a Divinely-Appointed King was -- that the people wanted to believe in that he was a good king because the Owl King left them next to nothing, and that could be used as a weapon as much as his army to keep everyone from gathering their own armies and marching on the capital. On the other hand, as Rokuta is quick to remember, even a good ruler can go bad -- the Owl King was divinely appointed. Don't get me wrong, it was a good book and I enjoyed it. I just got stuck on an idea of something else, which cast a shadow over the rest of the book.