Au Revior Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

This book is the print version of an action-packed adventure video game or PG movie--short on character development and complex plot but strong in entertainment value and suitability for short attention spans.  As long as the reader can tolerate a large dose of gratuitous violence, that is. Personally, I enjoyed it.  The book opens with a scene in which Perry's date to the prom has just shot him. We then get the back story. Perry Stormaire is a high school senior on the verge of graduating. Following his father's wishes, he dropped competitive swimming and focused on debate club and working part-time at his father's law firm while studying hard to earn decent SAT scores and a 3.3+ GPA.  His efforts have earned him a place on Columbia University's wait list.  Not good enough, but if he can persuade his father's boss to write a letter of recommendation, he just might make it.  His father has one more demand --take the Lithuanian foreign exchange student staying at their house to the prom.  Gobi has been a difficult guest--a socially awkward and unattractive girl who accentuates her shortcomings with her wardrobe choices and her secretiveness.  Nonetheless, she has asked to go to the prom and wants Perry to be her date.  Of course, Gobi is not what she seems.  In reality, she is a gorgeous, highly trained assassin who plans to use prom night to track down and execute five people. As an unwilling accomplice, Perry must deal with a threatening pair of Russian mobsters, witness brutal murders, steal cars and survive high speed chases, all while becoming increasingly attracted to his killer date.  Fast paced, with occasional humor and hints of romance, Au Revoir is a good bet for a short break from media entertainment.

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

Easily the most enjoyable read of the summer, this tale of treachery in Britain's Secret Service for supernatural threats centers on an agent who has quite literally lost her mind and must "catch up" to what's going on via a series of letters written by her brain's previous occupant before one of the organization's other agents kills her. Myfawny Thomas comes to learn that she is an upper-level bureaucrat within the governmental Chequy organization with a particular talent for neutralizing the nervous systems of anyone who threatens her. Her fellow agents include one who releases nerve gas through his skin, a contortionist, one who can liquify and reform metal with his bare hands, a vampire, and Gestalt--one mind that can move himself/herself among four bodies.  As she struggles to identify the traitor from the clues her former self has left her, Myfawny must also take on immediate threats from the Chequy's arch enemy, the Grifters, including a rapidly growing fungus with telepathic communication powers. Action scenes are written with panache as the heroine must figure out how to use her powers on the fly while conquering her gag reflex at the same time.

Myfawny is actually two distinct characters: the pre-amnesiac one is shy and submissive, but a tenacious investigator of the organization's financial history and current practices.  The  present amnesiac is  tough and assertive, with quite a temper and a dry sense of humor.  Myfawny's potential antagonists are less well-developed, but are given just enough background to make them interesting beyond their peculiar skill sets.  The Rook is an entertaining blend of roller coaster action, mystery, and the supernatural. O'Malley adds a totally new spin on the problems of memory loss.  Fun, fun, fun!!

Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza

Can an android evolve to become human?  That is the possibility that drives Mila and her mom to flee from the CIA/military lab that wants to exploit her capabilities or neutralize her.   The story begins with teenage Mila adjusting to life on a ranch in a small, midwestern town as she mourns the sudden death of her beloved dad and struggles with the increasing emotional distance from her veterinarian mother.  An accident that should have killed or at least paralyzed Mila leaves her merely shaken, and with an obviously broken prosthetic arm.   Forced to explain the injury, Mila's mother tells her daughter that MILA is shorthand for Mobile Intel Lifelike Android and that they--scientist and creation, are actually in hiding from the head of the lab that oversaw the project.  The reader learns all of this in Part One, a section plagued by fairly pedestrian writing, including predictable descriptions and cardboard secondary characters: Mila's friend Kaylee, heartthrob Hunter, and picture-perfect Mom.  The pace picks up, however, once Mila's strangeness is out in the open and her pursuers converge on the ranch.  Parts Two, Three and Four cover Mila's and her mom's flight from and confrontation with General Holland, who plans to test her effectiveness as a weapon and destroy her if she fails. There is plenty of action and suspense as Mila faces one crisis after another and tries to hold on to her hopes to become more human, while the skills she needs to survive are those of a machine. "With every punch, I became less of the girl Mom had risked everything to save and more of the monster Holland desperately hoped for." Mila's questioning what it means to be human adds depth to the story and the final action sequences in Part Four makes this a satisfying read.

Etiquette & Espionage

The first in a series, Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger is a great summer read, combining mystery and humor with a young ladies' finishing school in a Victorian steampunk setting.  The school in question is Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.  With rare exceptions, acceptance to the school is based on legacy. The  students possess special qualities that with the proper training they will become effective assassins and intelligencers.  Sophronia is one of the exceptions; she is a covert recruit, recommended by a family friend, Mrs. Barnaclegoose, who has observed Sophrina's penchant for getting into trouble--climbing, riding, hanging out in the stable--all decidedly unladylike activities.  The mystery in this book relates to a missing piece of technology that will make telegraph communication through the aethersphere possible.  Sophronia enlists the help of three classmates; a handsome boiler room crewman; the school's vampire, Professor Braithwope; and her mechanimal, Bumbersnoot,  to help her locate the missing prototype. In the course of the book she barely escapes from a werewolf and flywaymen, and must contend with her arch-rival Monique. The book is all plot, running a bit thin on character development and atmosphere.  It's all pretty silly, but fun.

The Age of Miracles

In The Age of Miracles, author Karen Thompson Walker takes on the logic problem that "If the sun has come up every day in known history until today, will it  rise tomorrow" and adds a twist.  The sun does continue to come up everyday, but now the days are getting longer as the earth's rotation slows.  What does this mean? What happens when a day/night cycle becomes so distorted that days and nights last 40 hours each?  Do people follow an artificial clock to maintain a 24-hour schedule or do they try to follow the circadian cycle of night and day no matter how long a day is?  How can these two very different choices affect society as a whole?  The narrator, a California teenager named Julia, who lives with her parents and two cats,  observes how life is changing, both for her personally and for her family and beyond. Responses to the official government announcement vary from panic and flight to resignation and calculation.  Within her own household there are extremes.  Julia's mother starts hoarding food while her father continues to go to work--or so she thinks.  Clearly there are tensions in her parents' marriage that are exacerbated by the crisis.  Julia also loses her best friend, when Hanna's Mormon family travels to Utah for the end of the world and leaves Julia to suffer  the cruelty often visited upon loners.  The novel juxtaposes the personal challenges that Julia faces as her parents fight and her grandfather disappears with the increasingly disrupted society forced into an artificial schedule that breaks down people mentally and physically.  She wants to find love and live the life of a normal teen, but cannot ignore the threats to her very existence, as plants and birds die and radiation from the sun becomes increasingly lethal.  Author Walker has written a thoughtful novel with an interesting premise. The narrative is full of descriptions of physical changes to the environment and humans, including  how strange it is to be awake and going to school in total darkness and then trying to sleep in full daylight.  Julia is a sympathetic character and one can't help but admire her resilience and faith that somehow mankind and science will find an answer. Recommended.

The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, brings to life the tragedy of the Dust Bowl, the unending, severe drought and massive dust storms that magnified the already devastating impacts of the Great Depression.  Egan sets the stage by reviewing the governmental and economic policies and practices that encouraged  famers and ranchers to settle the land without considering the importance of prairie turf  and available water. When all of the buffalo grass was plowed under and replaced with non-native crops, the land was at the mercy of the lack of water and abundance of wind.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Through interviews and documents, Egan focuses on how climate, technology, and  poor governmental policy and planning destroyed the lives and livelihoods of families and their communities.  Numerous accounts tell of  developers' and realtors' promises of a rosy future that led instead to  hopelessness and despair as families fell deeper into debt,  first trying to sell crops in a depressed market and then trying to harvest any crops at all once the rains failed.  While some families were able to survive, others lost their farms to the banks and their loved ones, mainly children and old people, to dust pneumonia.  Egan describes dust storms that shattered windows, created huge drifts across roads, blinded people and cattle, and penetrated every crack and crevice of settlers' homes, leaving residents suffering with bronchitis, laryngitis, sinusitis, and pneumonia.

The author also discusses how the government and other agencies tried to respond to the crisis.  Red Cross centers sprang up in larger communities.  New Deal CCC workers planted trees in rows to try to curb wind damage.  Roosevelt authorized a study of what went wrong--was it climate change or a man-made disaster?  Should the government buy back land and replant with resilient grasses to hold the soil?   The book is a treasure chest of personal experiences and awe-inspiring statistics on what happened.  It reads like fiction and creates a vivid image of what a black blizzard was.  Highly recommended.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

This award-winning novel by Benjamin Alire Saenz is told through the eyes of a 15-year-old Mexican American living in El Paso, Texas.  Ari, short for Angel Aristotle Mendoza, relates two years of his life, beginning with his meeting Dante Quintana at the local swimming pool.  The boys are opposites--Dante is upbeat, extroverted, and intellectual. He wears his heart on his sleeve, kisses his parents, and can cry about an injured bird.  Ari is aloof and prone to anger as he struggles with communicating with his father, a Vietnam vet, and learning more about his brother, Bernardo, who is in prison. He keeps all of his emotions bottled up inside.  Both boys are lonely and feel isolated from their culture and are struggling to define who they are.  The novel is one of exploration of the teens' deepening relationship.  Two widely separated but significant events force them to evaluate their feelings about and trust in each other.  Saenz's novel is about trust, pain, commitment, communication, and honesty.  This is a slow-paced but ultimately satisfying exploration of friendship, love, and acceptance.