Deathsong by Jack Scaparro

Rating: 3.5

What it's about:

Ancient Curse
They cut his hands off because they thought he was the Devil. How else could he play the piano without ever taking a lesson? As they threw his mangled body over the cliffs, into the boiling sea, he uttered a curse: death to every one of the descendants of his murderers. It was 1788, and most people in the sleepy town of First Landing, Maine believed in black magic. They were glad he was gone.

Present Evil
Nobody believed in curses anymore, especially sensible Diane Whitehead, who brought her husband and two children to Maine for a vacation--and to trace her ancestry in the picture-perfect town of First Landing. Diane was delighted to be able to rent the very house where her forebears had lived--until strange things began to happen. Poltergeists. Precipices that fell into the sea. Disembodied hands. Hideous deaths. Eerie music. And then one night, Diane's pretty seven-year-old daughter began to play the piano--without ever taking a lesson. The music was beautiful. Too beautiful to be anything but a Deathsong. -taken from back of book

My thoughts:
The story of Deathsong caught my eye. It sounded good and I liked the link between past and present. And the tie to music sounded cool too. It got off to a slow start though and the writing wasn't that great. The last part of the book was good and kept my attention. Overall I'd say it's not a bad book. I think Scaparro should have skipped over writing the novel though and instead wrote this as a screenplay for a movie.

Where the Girls Are by Susan J. Douglas

Rating: 3.0

What it's about:
"Where the Girls Are" is about the confusing and contradictory images of women in American pop culture. Media critic Susan J. Douglas looks back at the television programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reports of the past four decades to reveal the mixed messages conveyed to girls and women coming of age in America. In a humorous and provocative analysis of our postwar cultural heritage, Douglas deconstructs these ambiguous messages and examines their influence on her life and the lives of her contemporaries....It is no accident, she argues, that 'girl groups' like the Shirelles emerged in the early 1960s, singing sexually charged songs like "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?;" or that cultural anxiety over female assertiveness showed up in sitcoms like "Bewitched" whose heroines had magical powers; or that the news coverage of the Equal Rights Amendment degenerated into a spat among women, absolving men of any responsibility....And yet for all the images that reinforced a traditional view of servile and dependent women, Douglas powerfully reveals how American mass culture also undermined these images by offering countless examples of girls and women who were actors in the wider world and who controlled their own destinies. -taken from Barnes&Noble.com

My thoughts:
I found Where the Girls are to be an interesting read. I think the target audience was maybe my mother's generation though and much of the book I just couldn't relate to. It was written in the early 90's and it feels outdated. Douglas came off at times a bit too whiny for my taste and somewhat repetitive. She does make interesting points though and at times Where the Girls Are was an eye-opening read.

Wraeththu by Storm Constantine

Rating: 4.0

What it's about:
In this powerful and elegant story set in a future Earth very different from our own, a new kind of human has evolved to challenge the dominion of Homo sapiens. This new breed is stronger, smarter, and far more beautiful than their parent race, and are endowed with psychic as well as physical gifts. They are destined to supplant humanity as we know it, but humanity won't die without a struggle.

Here at last in a single volume are all three of Constantine's Wraeththu trilogy: The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, The Bewitchments of Love and Hate, and The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire. -taken from Barnes&Noble.com

My thoughts:
Wraeththu is a trilogy of books composed in one very thick book. The first book, The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, was hard to get into. The story was like nothing I've read before. This first book had a lot of terms and background history of this hermaphroditic race of beings that the author wanted to get out there, so it was by far the most boring of the three books. The second and third books made up for it though. The story itself takes place in the future but at times it really reminded me of historical fiction. It's got a post apocalyptic feel with a dry and dreary atmosphere. Wraeththu is a very original story with interesting characters. I'd highly recommend it to fans of sci-fi or fantasy. I would not recommend it to readers who are not big fans of this genre though.