One thing I love about books is all the different places I get to experience and visit all from the safety of my living room couch. This week I’ve gone to some pretty cool places.
Sara Varon’s lovely little graphic novel Robot Dreams took me to a world where a lonely dog can make his own best friend from robot kit. This is a wonderful and touching story about friendship with a bittersweet ending.
The pirates, cyborgs and time travel mentioned in the title of this post are all featured in The Sons of Heaven by Kage Baker, the final book in her Company Saga. I’ve followed the saga from the beginning, and have put off reading the final book for awhile because I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I was glad to see all my old friends for a little while. For years, it’s been nice to know that Santa would be bringing me a new Company book. Well, Baker continues to write books beyond the land ruled by Dr. Zeus Inc. and her novels will continue to take me to wonderful places that I have never been before. Still, I already miss Mendoza and Lewis and Joseph and all my cyborg friends.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart, took me on a road trip up to an exclusive New England prep school. Frankie’s rise from geeky freshmen, to cool crowd member, to criminal mastermind offers an interesting take on gender roles and stereotypes as Frankie encounters challenges at her elite, tradition-bound school. Not satisfied with being excluded from the all-male secret society, she decides to shake things up.
Emer Morrisey encouters an all male society of her own in The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King,
and makes herself a member. In this case, it is the pirate world. There are no cyborgs here, but a certain amount of time travel if one chooses to count reincarnation as a form of time travel, and how could you not? This inventive story spans centuries and continents as it tells the story of a one-time female pirate cursed to live 100 dog lives, before coming into her own again as a modern teenage girl haunted by her bloody past and driven by the promise of treasure. It’s a wonderful, action-packed ride of a novel and I was glad to stowaway in its pages for a little while.
Books are a wondeful, inexpensive way of getting away for awhile and without the hassle of waiting on airport security lines or getting stuck in highway traffic.
My Books
