"I might have rated this book a little higher, if only I'd gotten to the review right away, but I've been busy and had time to let things tumble around my analytical brain a little too long!

So first, I listened to the audio and the narration was well done, and the story flowed along and I was caught up in it. I actually didn't realize it was YA until I was finished. The author did a good job keeping me engaged and I thought the writing was fine, with the exception of a few too many "he said" and "she said" insertions.

Part of the reason for the giant "BUT" that you feel coming is because of expectations. I feel like a book is obligated to live up to what's promised in the blurb. This one is nominated for GR Readers Favorite Horror 2019, but why? This doesn't fit the genre. It isn't scary, just dystopian. The author threw in a "monster" near the end, and left it hanging. Also, the only things that liken it to Little Red Riding Hood are that Red is going to her Grandma's house, and she wears a red hoodie. Which is completely incongruous with how her character is defined. She is supposed to be ultra cautious to the point of paranoia, and spends lots of time and energy planning how to avoid the militias, avoid the military, avoid survivors who've devolved into criminal types, yet she still insists on wearing the color that yells "over here!"

The other reason I felt that giant wave of "BUT" after the enjoyment is that the author seems to be writing for the goal of lots of tag inclusions that will win points with lots of sub groups and find her a wider audience. Yet none of it seemed to have any relevance to the story. The monster is thrown in for the horror tag. Red is biracial and there's an unlikely racial incident thrown in. She's also disabled. There's a mention that she's attracted to both genders, so we can grab that LBGT tag. Lots of man bashing and rape fear--feminism tag. We've got the anti-NRA tag because Red hates guns (yet she can wield an axe at close range against a foe, just ignore that prosthetic leg!). Blah, blah, blah. I'm very tired of all these things added in, whether they are shameless bids for sales, or the author wanting their book to be a poster child for their own politics. Either way, if it doesn't feed the story, it becomes distracting. And subtracting, in the case of stars!

"

"***SPOILERS HIDDEN***

The first thing to know about Eowyn Ivey is that she’s Alaskan. She likes to make Alaska a character in her books. Black Woods Blue Sky especially feels like a homage to the state as she brought to life Alaskan landscapes, flora (often distractingly accompanied by formal scientific names), and fauna. The problem is, Black Woods Blue Sky is supposed to be a magical-realism story. However an author chooses to mix the magic and realism, one shouldn’t drastically outweigh the other. In this book realism drastically outweighs the magic, filling the story to bursting with hard Alaska, then going further to suck out any joy and lightness.

This is an unsophisticated work—although it didn’t have to be. The premise invites creative complexity and emotional depth, but Ivey was in a rush and didn’t want to imagine and explore. It revolves around three small-town Alaskans: a twentysomething restaurant server named Birdie; her talkative five-year-old daughter; and a stiff, barely communicative recluse named Arthur. There’s more to him than that, but only a few townspeople know what the “more� is; to most he’s simply a strange, lumbering guy from the woods.

This unappealing character and Birdie connect in a predictably tepid romance. Both are undeveloped as individuals, but particularly with Arthur, Ivey tried to fall back on an annoying romantic cliché: the quiet, brooding man whose air of mystery is supposed to make him automatically attractive. What she made instead, though, is worse: a male character who comes across as halfwitted, bordering on jerky. If Arthur is supposed to be swoon-worthy, Ivey’s first mistake was making him speak sparingly and in present-tense only. His speech oddities exist for a valid reason, but they don’t work in a romantic figure because they only dampen allure.

As is to be expected, this character provides little dialogue, and no dialogue that would reveal a complex (and complicated, given his secret) man beneath the odd exterior. Birdie is a cliché herself, merely airheaded and naïve, a sociable woman who likes to party, drink, and occasionally abuse drugs. Her backstory contains psychological trauma, but it’s a few factual sentences, devoid of the feeling that would also reveal a fuller character. Readers can’t be too interested in these characters, and the coupling is wildly unrealistic and lacking true love. A real-life Birdie would dismiss Arthur as the town weirdo, and he’d contentedly ignore everyone. That reality is too glaring for Ivey to be able to sell this romance.

After Birdie and her daughter move to Arthur’s remote cabin, they live off the grid in pure isolated bliss—another reality Ivey couldn’t sell. Hard-partying people-lover Birdie never once complains or yearns for her previous life. But more unrealistically, her child doesn’t complain, leading me to think that the author’s experience raising two children in Alaska left her with a romanticized, even spiritual, view of living close to nature. Although her daughters may have grown up in Alaska happily, they did so with a life that married off-the-grid–type inconveniences with modern conveniences. Raising a child off the grid is another reality entirely. Romanticization of the socially isolated, medically isolated, spartan life of this little girl makes the book impossible to truly love; one can easily argue that forcing a dependent to live off the grid is abusive.

Fans of The Snow Child may have a hard time believing Black Woods Blue Sky is by the same author. That earlier book has magic in its blood. The setting is a modest cabin often surrounded by feet of snow and battered by bitter winds, but the mood is shimmering snow globe. The strange “snow child� is charming and innocent. Ivey was patient in unfolding the story. It’s melancholic but so infused with wonder and dreaminess that the melancholy is more bittersweet than sad.

Black Woods Blue Sky is worlds different. The setting also features a modest cabin but without a cozy winter. Crucially, magical realism doesn’t envelope the whole story but is instead fully contained within Arthur, and it’s sinister. The plot is rushed and riddled with holes where complexity and nuance should be. One might assume those holes are because Ivey was impatient to get to show-stopping cinematic parts of the story: scenes featuring Arthur and his horrible secret—but she didn’t deliver once.

Many books tell awful tales without feeling awful in the reader’s core; the reader can effortlessly detach and not absorb. This one feels awful in the core. The characters� off-the-grid life is physically dark, boring, and somber, not enchanted forest. Every scene in this life, even those that are supposed to read as joyous, is steeped in loneliness and unease—until near the end, when Black Woods Blue Sky descends (view spoiler)[into full-blown tragedy. (hide spoiler)] Arthur’s persistent aloofness just depresses matters further.

Only Ivey’s beloved Alaska is crafted well. She was fiercely determined to educate readers about the struggles of real, raw Alaska, and her portrait of rugged Alaskan life comes from an intimate familiarity. For protection against grizzlies and other animals that can attack, Ivey’s characters never leave home without first slinging a rifle over their shoulder; they swat at mosquitoes; they chop wood; they haul water; and they fish, hunt, and harvest. Ivey knows she’s talented at portraying the state, and she does summon pretty visuals when she directs her energy that way. However, her attention to setting here is at the expense of everything else. She often got carried away, wasting so much ink on things that deserved just one or two sentences: descriptions of hiking, scenes showing the characters warding off bears (obviously meant to be a tip to readers), and facts about native flowers. All the practicality doesn’t just hog page space; importantly, it also clashes with the story’s bits of fantasy—emphasis on “bits.� Readers could probably forgive the Alaska-guidebook moments if Ivey had been generous with the fantasy.

People tend to associate magic with fun and awe, so the magical parts of magical realism have a certain rightness when they reinforce that association. Ivey spotlighted a gloomy reality so thoroughly that the warmth of a dramatic magical scene or two is required to temper it, not just to make the reader happy. (view spoiler)[The big-reveal moment in this book also begs for drama, though she disagreed. (hide spoiler)] She under-developed the magic enough that this feels like realistic fiction that was forced to be magical realism."

"I picked this book up from a local library free book cart primarily because I loved The Martian, a book I also got from the same library free book cart. I definitely overpaid for this one!

Admittedly, sci-fi is not a genre that I usually read. Actually I almost never read sci-fi, so I was surprised when I liked The Martian so much. I was equally surprised that I disliked Project Hail Mary as much, if not more than I enjoyed The Martian.

I admit that the premise is great. That said, there are so many reasons why I disliked the book so much. First and most important were the characters. Second, the lack of a suspenseful story. Third, the dominance of math & science in lieu of a great story. Lastly, a horrible ending to a very long and boring read that I came close to quitting on several occasions.

The presence of any of those elements may have earned the book a higher rating. All of them lacking leads to a very generous 2 star rating for a book that gets a collective 4.5 stars on GR. Go figure."

"I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It exceeded my expectations. Great behind the scenes look at the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas/Middle East conflicts and the ‘war� for the US Presidency, including insight into the numerous characters involved.

If you want a better idea into what makes Trump tick there is no better primer than Woodward’s ‘Prologue� of this book. If you want an opinion of Trump from a man who’s witnessed more Presidents up close than most of us �

“Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president. As I have pointed out, Trump governed by fear and rage. And indifference to the public and national interest. Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.�

� War by Bob Woodward


A couple of reviews I looked at post read complain that Woodward isn’t an ‘objective� journalist, and that he has a soft spot for President Biden. No question Woodward has respect for President Biden. The same cannot be said for Mr. Trump.

My question to those folks who claim bias towards Biden & against Trump is � what if Woodward is being both objective & truthful? I mean we all know that the Trump playbook doesn’t leave room for someone being unbiased and truthful if those people are critical of Mr. Trump."