Pages: 363
Pages Read: 114
I began reading Kathy Reichs' novel "Fatal Voyage" last night. In typical Reichsian fashion the novel jumps in with a scene of gore, a woman flying downwards through the trees naked and bloody severed from the rest of her body at the hips. The woman's position is compared to that of a car ornament.
The next paragraphs try to distance the reader from the carnage while filling in some background details. It's October, warm enough today but it will get colder etc.
It's masterfully done. Shock to reel 'em in and then distance to make them curious enough to stay. I started reading the Kathy Reichs novels after I fell in love with the Fox TV series "Bones" starring David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel. I think I mostly wanted to find out who they had based Booth's character off of ...
The Temperance Brennan of the novels is nothing like the Temperance Brennan in the television series except for the shared name and occupation. Whereas TV's Dr. Brennan is completely naive or oblivious about some things (most notably pop culture), the novel's Tempe is well-studied on a range of different topics, married and separated and has a whole host of family, including a daughter, that she worries about in every book.
At 113 pages in several things have happened. The main plot has been introduced - a fatal airplane crash involving over 80 people - and Detective Andrew Ryan has come down to North Carolina to help investigate since his longtime partner, Jean Bertrand, was on that plane transporting a prisoner. Tempe has been sorting through bones and body parts, distancing herself from Ryan and poking into things that would probably be safer unpoked - aka normal Tempe behavior.
In the woods of the crash site Tempe finds a foot being gnawed on by coyotes and after scaring them off (with Ryan's help of course) Tempe tags it to the plane crash. After examining it later, the foot doesn't seem to fit with any of the plane crash victims listed on the manifest. So Tempe does her usual thing and pokes around. Not long after that an anonymous complaint was filed against her for mishandling evidence and trespassing and she is summarily fired. This just pisses her off and makes her dig deeper to find out the truth of who is accusing her and what does it have to do with the weird severed foot she found?
I'm typically a happy-ending reader and I did not want to face the idea of going to bed with all that blood and gore at the forefront of my thoughts... So I picked up a new manga called Sorcerers & Secretaries by Amy Kim Ganter.
The pages aren't numbered (and I'd rather not bother to count them) but I'm on Chapter Six and have perhaps twenty pages left to read. The premise here is that Nicole is a secretary who writes and dreams of a fantastical fairy tale other world while living, working and studying in our boring dreary one.
She guards her dream log against discovery while fending off the catty drama of a "friend," avoiding a boy who'd like to be more than just "friends" and getting through her day-to-day life.
The situation takes a turn for the comical when the boy, who is normally pretty smooth, shows himself to be goofily infatutated with Nicole. Nicole brushes off all his attempts with a stoic cold shoulder and we don't even find out that she likes him until they have had several uninspiring encounters. All his flirting with other girls doesn't seem to show Nicole how desirable he is but that he doesn't care for Nicole in particular. So Nicole is wary of his attentions but it just makes Josh try harder.
The drawings are mediocre and even a little childish looking and I hope the plot warms up soon. I'm attracted to the idea of the plot but there's something about it that is not as satisfying as other manga (even American manga) that I have read. Perhaps it's not moving fast enough to keep my attention or well-fleshed out enough to be realistic. I'm not positive on that score yet so I'll have to get it figured when I have finished with this first book. Maybe once I'm into the second book I'll be hooked?
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