Roger Hyttinen

Review of Body Swap by Sylvia McNicoll

October 9, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

The story starts out with a fatal car accident when Susan, an 82-year-old woman, runs over 15-year-old Hallie with her Hurricane SUV. They both awake at some sort of otherworldly carnival where Hallie accuses the older woman of carelessly running her over. Susan claims her gas pedal stuck and that the accident wasn’t her fault. They manage to persuade “the powers that be” to give them another chance. They are both then sent back to earth to discover the true cause of the accident. The kicker is that they awake in each other’s bodies – 15-year-old Hallie is now in the body of an 82-year-old woman and Susan now has the youthful body of a 15-year-old.

I’ve always enjoyed the body switching trope in which each person views life from the perspective of the other. Movies such as Freaky Friday, Big and 18 Again come to mind. In this book, I enjoyed how the two main characters had to figure out how to live in each other’s bodies and deal with all the challenges that come with it. Up until now, Hallie was a self-obsessed phone-addicted teenager whose primary focus was attracting the attention of the boy she was crushing on. Susan, on the other hand, was dealing with her son who not only treated her as though she were a child but was also intent on placing her in a nursing home. They were two people who couldn’t have been more different.

It’s also worth mentioning that there is also a race against the clock theme — Hallie and Susan must work together to determine the real cause of the accident before time runs out. What I especially enjoyed, is how the two of them became devoted and fierce friends, each looking out for the other and evolved as characters. In this way, the story is a lesson in empathy and selflessness — and what’s it like to walk in someone else’s shoes. I think that putting a teen in a senior’s body is an excellent way of illustrating the challenges that older people face in today’s world and perhaps bring awareness to how senior citizens are treated in our society.

That being said, the character development in this story was phenomenal, as both women learn the importance of respecting and understanding others who are different than themselves. They also discover that there is plenty to learn from each other and both attain a new level of wisdom by walking in the other’s shoes.

Though there was a serious undertone to the story, there were also plenty of hilarious moments, like their interactions with their friends and families. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud mishaps and misadventures as they try to navigate life in their new body, which is of course, what makes body swap stories so much fun.

The only problem I had with the novel was that it wasn’t always easy to picture the correct character during the narrative. For example, Susan refers to Hallie as Susan, even though Hallie looks like Susan. Likewise, Susan’s friends and family refer to Hallie as Susan, and when they are in the presence of each other, Susan refers to Hallie as Susan and Hallie refers to Susan as Hallie. Confused? From time to time, I was too. Because of this, I feel that that body swap trope works much better on the screen than it does in a novel. Though I did get the hang of it as the story progressed, it was a tad confusing and disconcerting initially.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and meaningful read with interesting characters. To be honest, I was expecting more fluff, but there was a delightful substance to this story, and I adore being surprised. Not to mention, the ending is satisfying, and I loved the full-circle nature of the story.

I thought the author did an excellent job of telling the story from each character’s perspective and I really enjoyed the witty banter between Hallie and Susan. The dynamic between the main characters was believable and relevant. Body Swap ended up being a beautifully written, fascinating, insightful, and well-wrought book from two very different perspectives and is well worth the read.

A big thank you to EdelWeiss Plus for providing a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Purchase Body Swap at Amazon

Purchase Body Swap at The Book Depository

Review of Mistborn 1: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

October 8, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

This is the first book in the Mistborn trilogy, which is an epic high fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson. I’ve kind of rediscovered my love of fantasy recently. When I was a kid, I read hundreds of Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery novels, so it’s been a lot of fun to dive in once again.

The World

So The Final Empire takes place in a dystopian world that has been ruled for a thousand years by the Lord Ruler who is believed to be immortal and who governs by absolute power and terror. His empire is referred to as The Final Empire.

In this grim world, ash continually falls from the sky, the sun is glowing red, and there are no flowers or grass. There are two groups of people: The nobility, who are under the Lord Ruler’s thumb and the Skaa, who are more or less peasants and who have lived in slavery, misery and fear ever since the Lord Ruler took power, and who are often killed without cause by the Lord Ruler’s enforcers or by their Noble overlords. So the lives of the Skaa are pretty much that of constant terror.

For them, all hope is lost. Or is it?

But the main characters in this story are a group of misfits who are trying to overthrow the Final Empire, led by a man named Kelsier.

Now Kelsier is a legend in the underworld – a masterful thief who could pull off any heist, that is until the Lord Ruler caught him and sentenced him to the Pits of Hathsin — a place from where nobody has ever escaped alive.

But escape Kelsier did, and when he did, he recruited underworld’s elite.

**The magic system in this world is called Allomancy and is quite impressive. **

It’s a system in which you ingest different types of pure metals and then “burn” them by will in order to temporarily gain enhanced abilities such as increased speed, super hearing, and enhanced strength. For example, you “choose” to burn copper and you do.

Some of these metals can allow you to almost fly through the air or fire objects with the speed and strength of bullets.

The majority of Allomancer’s are called Mistings and have the ability to burn only one metal and one metal only. But there is a rare and special type of Allomancer called a Mistborn who can burn All the metals, so these are indeed truly powerful individuals, nearly unstoppable.

As we learn, Kelsier is a Mistborn. So he has brought together the smartest and most trustworthy Allomancers, with the goal of taking down the Lord Ruler, a more or less suicidal task.

Introducing Vin – A Street Thief with a Huge Secret

Kelsier ends up recruiting a young woman named Vin, a street thief, who has been abused and betrayed by everyone she’s met.

But as it turns out, the girl has some impressive powers of her own and Kelsier takes it upon himself to bring them out. But she’ll have to learn to trust him first — not an easy task.

So the rest of the story revolves around the ragtag crew of misfits who have undertaken the impossible. We dive head-first into this strange and unsettling society as we see their plan unfold with the huge question: How can you defeat the undefeatable? And what will be the price to try?

I loved, loved, loved this book!

The world-building was phenomenal, and The Final Empire had the most creative and meticulous magic system I’ve ever come across in fantasy.

Allomancy was fascinating, and I loved the depth that the author went into in describing it.

And the world was delightfully creepy, yet mesmerizing

The world itself was also enthralling, with the dreadful Lord Ruler and his terrifying order of Steel Inquisitors, also believed to be immortal, with steel poles through their eyes; the frightening mists that took over the city every night; the mysterious origins of the immortal Lord Ruler; and the dead-yet-alive mist-wraiths that lived in the mists.

It’s a chunkster but well worth the effort!

I was a bit hesitant to start this book because it was a chunkster, coming in at 647 pages but once got started, I tore right through it.

This book had a masterful intricate plot, a group of true badasses, a powerful yet damaged heroine who turns out to be quite lethal to her enemies, rich dialog and banter, an awesome magic system and amazingly developed characters that I ended up falling in love with.

I loved The Final Empire so much that I immediately picked up the second one in the series and I’m over halfway done with it — and it’s longer than the first one.

Purchase The Final Empire from Amazon
Purchase The Final Empire from The Book Depository

Review of My Life As a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland

October 7, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

I was in the mood for something crazy and fun, and this book fit the bill. Plus I loved the cover!

My Life as a White Trash Zombie follows Angel, a 21-year-old pill-popping, high school dropout who lives with her alcoholic father. She’s also a convicted felon for car theft (though it wasn’t her fault) and she’s now on probation.

One day, she waked up in the ER. The doctors tell her that she had just suffered a near-fatal overdose of painkillers. The funny thing is that Angel remembers being in a horrible car accident, covered in her own blood but at it turns out, there’s not a scratch on her. Authorities also told her that she was found naked on the side of the road, which also made no sense to her, though to be truthful, her memories of that night are still somewhat sketchy.

Things even get weirder when she receives an anonymous letter telling her there’s a job waiting for her at the morgue. Given the way her life has been spiraling downward recently, she doesn’t dare to refuse the job, especially given the note warns that if she fails to hold onto the morgue job for a month, her toxicology results will be shared with her probation officer and she’ll end up going to jail.

On top of that, the anonymous note author gave her a supply of strange energy drinks, and the note told she must drink one of them every other day. As her supply of drinks dwindled, she receives another note, telling her, “If you crave it, eat it.”

The thing is, is that recently Angel has been craving brains. During an autopsy, she found her mouth began watering and her stomach grumbling at the mere smell of brains. They smelled….delicious!

She finally gives in to her cravings one day and finds that eating brains gives her a rush that her pills ever did.

Because of her new habit of eating brains, she can only come to one conclusion: Somehow she has been turned into a zombie. It’s only when she meets another actual zombie, and he confirms her suspicions.

So the question is: who turned her and why?

So the rest of the book follows our young newbie zombie as she struggles with her new and improved self, falls in lust with a hunky policeman, tries to keep her secret from loser boyfriend, gets in a couple of rows with her alcoholic dad and surprisingly, finds that since becoming a zombie, she’s changed more than just physically. She also grown as a person and now sees that there’s a lot more to life than pills and booze. In fact, her life is the best it’s ever been, brain-eating aside.

It’s fun to watch her as she learns her limits and adjusts to her new zombie powers. She also ends up being quite a resilient character.

But life as a zombie isn’t all smooth sailing for Angel. There’s a serial killer on the loose who’s been decapitating his/her victims and keeping the heads…which of course, means fewer brains for Angel are showing up at the morgue. But things heat up even more when she and the serial killer cross paths, leading to a riveting climax!

So I ended up loving this book. It was so much fun! I can’t tell you how many times I laughed out loud. It was snarky, funny, irreverent, unique and all around fun read. It also had a unique take on zombies which I really enjoyed, and there was even a mystery to solve.

The story was nicely wrapped up at the end with a completely satisfying ending. This just might be my new favorite zombie book, though I did enjoy Warm Bodies as well. As for the dialog, it was amazing, and there were so many lines caused me to crack up.

A truly fun romp of a book with great witty banter along with likable characters, a gripping plot, a little romance, a serial killer, a touch of redemption and ….zombies… made this a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ read for me.

Purchase My Life As a White Trash Zombie from Amazon

Purchase My Life as a White Trash Zombie from The Book Depository

Review of Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

October 6, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

Cabin at the End of the World is a horror novel that follows Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew who are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a large stranger named Leonard unexpectedly appears in the driveway. He is young, friendly, and he wins Wen over almost instantly. They talk and play for a while until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.”

Then, three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying menacing homemade weapons. As Wen runs inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

The four strangers plead with Wen, Andrew, and Eric to let them in, that they have to, that the fate of the entire world is at stake, but they refuse. Eventually, the four strangers manage to forcibly break in, and there are injuries as a result. The story then turns into a tense and gripping home invasion tale of survival, which is personally a trope that scares the bejeezus out of me.

Once the four of them have subdued Wed and her dad, they explain that the Wen, Andrew, and Eric need to make a sacrifice – an ultimate sacrifice within the next 24 hours or so. If not, the world will be destroyed. So the question is: Are the four strangers cultists or crazies? Or is the world on the brink of the apocalypse?

The book did an excellent job at building up suspense and paranoia as the remote little cabin turned into a house of horrors complete with a torture chamber. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, to see what was going to happen next and whether that which the four had predicted would come to pass — that is, whether the world actually was on the brink of collapse.

Now I will say that some of the violence that takes place is described in very gory, vivid and disturbing ways so more sensitive readers might want to pass on this one. I do like a good horror novel, so it didn’t bother me too much — though it definitely was disturbing.

This was an uncomfortable book – a real psychological thriller — whose tension escalated as time passed in the cabin. It was tense, suspenseful and gut-wrenchingly horrifying, the kind of book that will either give you nightmares or keep you up at night.

Though it was a suspenseful and gripping read with well-developed characters, at the end of it all, it didn’t quite work for me.

The main reason was the ending: Let me just say that if you like a nice, tidy resolution to a story, then this book is not for you. This is the kind of story that leaves you with more questions than answers, and leaves you with an unsatisfied feeling after turning the last page — or at least it did for me.

It seemed like the author spent the entire novel building up this incredible amount of suspense only to have it fizzle out at the story’s end. I expected more of a dramatic ending — or at the very least, an answer to the story’s central questions.

But the payoff just wasn’t there. Now if you don’t mind somewhat vague endings or experimental stories, then, by all means, give Cabin at the End of the World a try. It just wasn’t the novel for me. ⭐⭐

Purchase Cabin at the End of the World at Amazon

Purchase Cabin at the End of the World at The Book Depository

Review of Less by Andrew Sean Greer

October 6, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

This book was a Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 2018 and is named after our main protagonist, Arthur Less, a fumbly, insecure gay man about to turn 50 and whose latest manuscript has just been rejected by his long-time publisher.

To make matters worse, a wedding invitation arrives in the mail announcing that Arthur’s boyfriend of the past nine years, Freddy, is marrying someone else. Hell, Arthur didn’t even realize that their relationship was over.

So he certainly wasn’t about to attend the wedding as that would be majorly awkward. But to refuse would look petty. Deeply discouraged and more than a bit heartbroken, Arthur does what anyone else would do in such as situation:

Run Away!!

As it turns out, he has a stack of nearly-forgotten bookish invites to various literary events all around the world: Italy, France, Morocco, Japan, India, Germany…. so Less decides to accept every invitation, award ceremony, speaking engagement and teaching opportunity that was sent his way and embark on an around-the-world adventure.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

What follows is a zany series of misadventures, misunderstandings, missteps, and more than a few personal humiliations as Arthur attempts to run away from his problems — or at least momentarily forget about them which he discovers isn’t easy to do.

Along the way, he reminisces about his life, he meets up with former lovers and aging friends, makes new friends and even comes close to falling in love.

The story takes bits and pieces of his current life and his memories and weaves them together into a compelling, insightful narrative — and the author does it with wit and humor.

You know, this quirky book ponders many of life’s important questions — universal questions — so that in this way, it was entirely relatable.

It was especially relatable for me, being a gay male in his 50’s but I think that the universal nature of the themes in this book such as love, loss, nostalgia, lost opportunities, growing older, disappointment, searching for meaning in our life, and acceptance would render it relatable to most people.

This poignant and thought-provoking book had me from the get-go. I thought this was a beautifully written and meaningful book with wondrously descriptive scenes and lush, vibrant prose.

It was an intoxicating and profoundly engaging read with plenty of humor and heart, and I ended up loving the quirky character of Arthur Less. The writing was clever, witty, sophisticated, and utterly charming. I was also pleased with the emotional and entirely satisfying ending which cinched its 5-star rating for me.

Purchase Less at Amazon

Purchase Less at The Book Depository

Review of Rule by Ellen Goodlett

September 18, 2018 by Roger Hyttinen Leave a Comment

Rule follows three secretive women: Zofi, Akeylah, and Ren, each of whom harbors a dark, traitorous secret that would no doubt lead to her execution if word ever got out. So when the king of Kolonya summons them to the palace, they each believe that someone has discovered their secret and that their days are numbered.

But King Andros has summoned the girls for an entirely different reason. The king is dying, and his only son has recently been murdered leaving no heir to the throne — except that is, for Zofi, Akeylah and Ren, his three illegitimate daughters that nobody knew about.

The king tells the three women that they will train and work with him in the coming days and that he will choose one of them to be his successor. So now they must compete with one another to prove themselves worthy for the throne of Kolonya, so a rivalry develops between the three half-sisters as only one can be chosen as the heir.

However, there is someone out there who doesn’t want ANY of them to rule — someone who knows each of their secrets and has resorted to blackmail to keep them from the throne. The strange blackmailer has given each of them the same choice: leave Kolonya or their secret will be revealed. So as the danger to the sisters escalates, they begin working together each using her own natural talents to try to stop their blackmailer.

What follows is a fast-paced story of political intrigue, magic, blackmail, deceit, dangerous plots, complicated romances, and an enthralling mystery. I found the characters likable and relatable, with distinct personalities and character voices. I also loved how each woman’s secret built up the storyline and overall, felt that the story is clever, engaging and wildly entertaining.

The only thing that bothered me regarding the story’s plot was the magic system. In this story, the people use a form of magic called The Arts. The Arts consists of blood magic tithing, which provides increased speed, strength, and stamina. To activate the magic, you have to cut yourself to draw blood. I found this magic system a bit disturbing in that one had to resort to self-mutilation to trigger their magic, so there was a good deal of cutting in the book. Now I’m not a fan of cutting, to begin with, but I felt especially uncomfortable by this particular system of magic — or any magic system for that matter which involves self-harm to bring forth power.

Magic system aside, the novel held my attention until the very end and had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. And then came the end and it all went to hell. Or should I say, it didn’t go anywhere. The story ended on a disappointing “cliffhanger” in which there was no resolution to any plot thread. Literally, nothing in the story was resolved. It just fizzled out. In fact, the ending was so abrupt that I felt the author terminated the story in the middle of a chapter. It is my humble opinion that if a novel cannot stand on its own, then the author has failed.

I have no problem with books in a series; in fact, I mainly read series these days. But when a book ends on a ridiculous cliffhanger with no resolution, then it’s an utter failure. After I turned the last page this book, I felt robbed — robbed that I wasted three days reading this novel only to end up with…absolutely nothing. It’s a shame really — I really was enjoying the story right until the end, and it probably would have been a four-star read for me. But given that it is only a half-finished book, the most I can give it is two stars.

Now if you don’t mind cliffhangers, then you may want to give Rule a try as it is quite a gripping story. Unfortunately, the cliffhanger killed it for me, and I won’t be continuing with the series.

A huge thank you to Netgalley for providing a review copy of this book!

Purchase Rule at Amazon

Purchase Rule at The Book Depository