Ticking Like a Time Bomb, Baby

Crazy kept on ticking. Just like a time bomb, was what I was thinking that night.

(p. 167, Loc. 1873)

Lil Littlepage Eller and Boris (he of the sharp claws and teeth) are back in action in Gone Crazy, the second of Shannon Hill's "Lil and Boris" series. This time, Lil's not only dealing with trying to find a place to live in Crazy that isn't with her Aunt Marge and Marge's beau, a new resident in Crazy named Raj who's both in love with her best friend Bobbi and making the local "whites only" crowd more than a little upset, various holidays (or, rather, local excuses to get drunk and disorderly). Not to mention a rash of nude teenagers.

"Do me a favor," I said. "When you talk to your son? Explain clothes." (p. 136, Loc. 1534)

Just to top matters off, she's also investigating the murder of Vera Collier, matriarch of the Collier clan. In Lil's own words:

"[The federal government] could go around the Colliers and Paint Hollow, or through them. It took them about half a minute to decide it was easier to go around.

And that's how everyone feels about the Colliers." (p. 7, Loc. 87)

I've realized, and I may have mentioned this in my previous review of Crazy, VA, that I really enjoy murder mysteries as a "comfort food" sort of reading. And two books into the series, I can definitely say that Lil and Boris hit that spot just perfectly for me. I picked up Crazy, VA because it was a free Kindle offering, but I enjoyed it enough that I bought Gone Crazy and am probably going to pick up the next one in the series before I head off on a plane trip. 

Crazy is, well, crazy. It also has the small-town dynamic I'm familiar with from places I've lived and worked. Lil remains real and relatable, even if Boris isn't, entirely (Boris is far smarter than any cat I've ever encountered, and my sister's and cousins' cats are pretty darn clever).

Boris didn't approve. He has a hate-hate relationship with the vet, ever since Dr. Mitchell neutered him and he bit Dr. Mitchell so hard the man needed stitches and antibiotics. (p. 15, Loc. 169)

Fair enough. I've got enough stories of Animals Behaving Badly at the vet that maybe Boris is quite real and a lot of what comes across as unreal is Lil's habit of anthropomorphizing him. After all, once upon a time my roommate's iguana bit our vet so hard he had to get stitches and antibiotics.

In the end, though, it's the relationship of Lil with the other humans around her that mean Crazy's a place I want to keep coming back to. Especially in the summer when I'm looking for comfort fiction like a good ice cream cone.

 ...I had Crazy to look forward to. It wasn't what you'd call a good end to a good day.

It got a lot worse when someone tried to kill me.

On second thought, I'm happy to read about Crazy. But not so sure I'd want to live there.

Come for the Druid, Stay for the Pop-culture Quoting Ageless Hound (re-read)

"Toto didn't deserve that kind of trauma. He was so tiny."

Kevin Hearne's Hounded (Book 1 of the Iron Druid Chronicles) was yet another discovery I made through John Scalzi's Whatever; the short version of the Big Idea is that Atticus O’Sullivan is older than Jesus (sorry, them's the shakes) and being hunted by an angry Irish god. Well, in the first book. Eventually, he ends up being chased by a Loki who's convinced Ragnarok is just around the corner -- and Atticus' fault. Which it kind of is.

But that comes later.

I read the Big Idea and thought the basic story sounded intriguing. And, okay, I've got a soft squishy spot for shapeshifting and ancient magic in the modern world. And the novel (and its sequels) do provide that, and a well-thought-out mythology that does, in point of fact, include Jesus. And Coyote. And I know at this point I'm starting to make it sound much like American Gods. Which...there are a few similarities. Only the gods in Hearne's universe aren't dying. And O'Sullivan has pissed a fair number of them off (as opposed to Shadow who does end up pissing off the gods but it's more...situational...than intentional).

So that's what drew me in. What won me over was downloading the Kindle Preview and reading the following opening paragraph:

There are many perks to living for twenty-one centuries, and foremost among them is bearing witness to the rare birth of genius. It invariably goes like this: Someone shrugs off the weight of his cultural traditions, ignores the baleful stares of authority, and does something his countrymen think to be completely batshit insane. Of those, Galileo was my personal favorite. Van Gogh comes in second, but he really was batshit insane. (Page 1)

There is something about O'Sullivan's "voice" that I find very appealing and easy to read. And in fact I chewed through this book: swordfights, Gods and Goddesses and vampires and werewolves and...

...and I've left the best for last. O'Sullivan has a "pet", friend, familiar named Oberon, who is an Irish (naturally) Wolfhound. Due to O'Sullivan's Druidic skills, he can speak with Oberon mind-to-mind, and where I know it's been done, rarely does one see the following sort of exchange (O'Sullivan in italics):

I thought you said never to attack humans.
She hasn't been human for a very long time.
I do not think she will attack, though. She is a very nice inhuman.
You mean nonhuman. Inhuman is an adjective.[...]
Hey, I'm not a native speaker. Give me a break. (Page 28)

Oberon isn't particularly divine, isn't a guiding spirit. He's a dog who likes to hunt and to be told stories: 

Will you tell me about Genghis Khan's whores while I'm in the bath?
Hordes, not whores. He had both, though, now that you mention it. 
Sounds like he was a busy guy.
You have no idea.(Page 60)

Between Atticus' at once sardonic and justifiably world-weary voice and Oberon's strange combination of naivete and doggy-ness -- and I haven't even mentioned the lawyer Werewolf or the barmaid-turned-apprentice -- I'm fond of the characters. And since these books are an easy enough read that I can chew through one in an afternoon, I keep coming back when I'm looking for something that'll amuse me.

We don't need to play her witch's games. They always want to get you and your little dog, too. 
I knew I never should have let you watch The Wizard of Oz. 
Toto didn't deserve that kind of trauma. He was so tiny.(Page 87)

I recommend giving Hounded a try. O'Sullivan's universe provides a nice little twist on the 'urban fantasy' genre.

A visit to M.C. Escher Park: The Relativity of Dogs, Cats, and Bunnies

"Wait, you have a 3m leash fitting under a 1.3m bridge? What is this, M.C. Escher Park?"  – Emmy the Dog (Loc 1291)

The point of the example confusing Emmy the dog (and me on the first read-through, if I'm being perfectly honest) is that "When trying to understand the effects of relativity, it's critical to keep track of which observers make which measurements at which times." One of the things I adore about How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is the choice of examples, often from Emmy's point of view (or Nero the cat's -- but, as Emmy says, "'...cats aren't to be trusted. Particularly not cats named after insane Romans.'") that Orzel uses to explain various aspects of Einstein's principles of Relativity; from defining motion to the initial realization that maybe the universe didn't work quite as expected to the 1905 publication of Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, "Time Slows When you're Chasing Bunnies" (time dilation), "Honey, I shrank the Bunnies" (length contraction, including the paradoxes caused by misapprehension of who is perceiving what when) and on to spacetime and through the search for a Unified Theory of Everything. Orzel takes a conversational tone both with the reader and in his asides with Emmy, and if his teaching style is anything like his writing style I'd love to take one of his classes one day.

There are also charts and graphs (often representing the aforementioned Emmy and Nero, as well as a handful of other canine, feline, and inanimate friends), and Emmy is forever trying to use relativistic physics in her neverending quest to get her teeth on the tasty bunnies and squirrels who are forever out of her reach. Emmy, brilliant as she is, cannot under her own propulsion get up to near-light speeds.

"It'd be way more fun to measure a relativistic bunny than to do boring logical inference from experiments with atomic clocks."  – Emmy
"I'll keep that in mind in case I ever end up with the billions of dollars it would take to build a bunny accelerator."  – Orzel (Loc 1349)

I picked up both How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog and How to Teach Physics to your Dog after the latter was the subject of a "The Big Idea" post on John Scalzi's Whatever blog. And while I suppose it might seem insulting: Dogs, after all, are not on the same level of comprehension as people for most things. But the conceit amused me far more than "The Idiot's Guide To..." or "...for Dummies", and then the writing style engaged me, and before I quite knew what hit me I was more than halfway through the book and -- though I wouldn't say my understanding is remotely complete -- found myself more than halfway through the book and reluctant to put it down to go to work.

"'It's all freaky and makes my head hurt. All the stuff I thought was fixed and unchanging is all different.'" (Loc 1394)

In his "Big Idea" piece, Orzel sums up what he wants the text to do thusly: "To a dog, the world is an endless source of surprise and wonder. [...] If you can put aside human preconceptions about what ought to happen, and work through the consequences[...], you can better appreciate the power and beauty of the theory." Keeping that in mind, I consider his work a success, and absolutely recommend both How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog and How to Teach Physics to your Dog as primers for anyone interested in physics or relativity – and anyone who understands the underlying concepts. Emmy's humorous stabs at using misunderstood portions of the concepts are the icing on the proverbial cake.

(Side note; links to amazon.com from this blog will also raise money for ACS, just like the main Cannonball Read blog. Links from Whatever will not.)

Clans and Cats and Murder, Oh My.

Boris the Deputy Cat gave Crazy that little extra edge of insanity it didn't really need. (pp. 174-175)

To be perfectly honest, I picked Crazy, VA up because it was free at the time. And because not that long ago I was talking to a friend whose comfort go-to is Romance Novels. And I realized mine are mysteries.

Crazy is a small town in Virginia, divided by a river and by family ties that go back generations. Right back to the founding of the town, as the reader learns in the first chapter of the novel. Sheriff Lil Eller straddles the divide not only in her role in the town but as the only child of both Littlepage and Eller clans. Although her parents were disinherited, she as a grandchild was not; she comes into money and promptly turns it back into an animal shelter. She's got no deputy other than the feral cat -- Boris -- who adopts her in one of the early chapters.

And then Lisa Littlepage, her cousin, is murdered.

Obviously, Sheriff Eller's life gets a whole bunch more interesting. The investigation, Boris, the county police Chief dragging his heels over the investigation, the building of the animal shelter, another cousin demanding she take the investigation back and hiring a (human) deputy she desperately needs and doesn't like, Boris, drunks, animal abusers, adults getting stuck in almost frozen natural water slides, a hurricane, Halloween...

Scared people make stupid mistakes, and there'd already been enough of those by the look of things. (p. 197)

And the murder hanging over her head the whole time.

Hill's writing style is bright and easy to read, and she does an excellent job of bringing not only Lil Eller and Boris but also the supporting characters to life. First person can be complicated to bring off satisfactorily, but Lil's resilience, stubbornness, and generally no-nonsense manner carry through consistently (even if she does ascribe perhaps more intelligence and intent to Boris' actions than are strictly plausible. Hey, I'm a pet person, I ascribe intelligence and intent to my guinea pigs and they're not half as smart as your average cat).

There's a quote toward the end of the book that sums up my feelings about the whole thing pretty well: "Business as usual. Funny, how comforting that can be." (p. 219) I didn't pick up Crazy, VA for a challenging read or because I wanted to wear my literary criticism glasses. I picked it up because I wanted a murder mystery to comfort myself with, a little literary bon bon. I'll be picking up the rest of Hill's novels eventually, because crazily enough this book just hit the spot.

(Side note; links to amazon.com from this blog will also raise money for ACS, just like the main Cannonball Read blog. I'm not sure how that works with the book's built-in 25% going to animal charities, but hey.)