Book Review: Mare's War

I picked this one up at the library since I remembered it was a title on my to-read list and I've actually been in the mood lately for something with a more historical bent to it.

Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

Summary: Octavia and her sister Tali are less than thrilled that they have to spend a large part of their summer vacation with their rather unconventional grandmother Mare. She smokes, drives fast cars, and wears high heels which throughly embarrasses her two granddaughters but she wants to take this summer and tell them her story and how as a young black woman, just a girl really, she joined the women's army in World War II and was even more unconventional than they had thought.

The Good: Mare's story was just as engaging and interesting as I had hoped, I liked how the story covered not only her time in the Women's Army but also her life before and a bit about her time after the war (and it was nice to see that just because the war was over doesn't mean her group was disbanded immediately since you still need to start with the reconstruction after the war). I liked the characters, although at times I wondered if Octavia and Tali were included in this story so that the author could get a little soapbox-y about inequality (it was how the lines were set up just a little too perfectly to lead into those bits) and felt like everything was also well paced. Since Mare isn't one of the key players in World War II this story is more character focused than plot focused and I thought it was really well pulled off.

The Bad: I'm in two minds about Octavia's half of the story, on the one hand I can see how Davis wanted to use this summer as a way to get Octavia (and Tali) to grow but on the other hand it was a bit boring. I think the story could have stood perfectly fine on it's own if it was just about Mare, although obviously then it wouldn't have been able to include the very end of the story in the present day, and I might have preferred it that way. Again, there was nothing wrong with the characters of Octavia and Tali or the plot, setting, pacing, any of that, it was just a bit dull and I don't feel like it was really needed in the end. 


I'm giving this book a 3.5 out of 5 for having an interesting historical story yet a duller half with the present day story. And of course I need to also plug both Flygirl (black girl passes as white to enter the WASP) and Code Name: Verity (British spy recounts to her diary, which is then read to her captors, how she and a friend, also a pilot, ended up working in the British military up to the point of her capture in German-held France). All three of these are great works of historical fiction although Verity is the most likely of the three to make you cry, just a warning about that (and I have no clue what it's sequel, due out this year, is supposed to be about or how that's even going to work).

Book Review: Fire Horse Girl

So, I'm not 100% sure how I got this book. I remember seeing it on Unshelved's bookclub list and entering a contest there to try and get a copy myself. Didn't hear anything so I assumed I hadn't won a copy and then one showed up at my apartment on my birthday which left me quite happy. Until I realized a few days later that I had never had the book sent to my apartment and that UPS had somehow magically known to send it there instead of my PO box, they had even put a second shipping label on top of the original one. I'm still happy I got the book, I'm just now very confused how it happened, I guess I got lucky that I had them reroute a package of mine a couple of weeks earlier and they were able to look up my address again?


Fire Horse Girl by Kay Honeyman

Summary: Jade Moon was born in the year of the Fire Horse and she embodies all the traits of it: stuborn, reckless, and headstrong. Partially because of this horoscope, and partially through Jade Moon fulfilling it, she's lonely and frustrated so when a cousin arrives at their house with a plan to go to America for a new start eager to take it, no matter what problems they might find there. 

The Good: Bit of a different setting than I normally come across which was nice (although I did have to make sure I read this and The Broken Lands far enough apart that I didn't accidentally mix up Jin and Jade Moon), I liked how it was set in San Francisco in the 20s and the author kindly provided a list of sources which I'm going to check out since I realized that I really have no idea what the history of the west coast is like. And it was that not exactly novelty but different-ness about Jade Moon's situation, the setting, and how her new life in America turns out that kept me interested in the book.

The Bad: The pacing felt a little weird to me, although I think part of that was because the book flap talked about Jade Moon going to America and the cover showed that she was going to crossdress and as a result I expected both of those events to happen sooner than they did. Even taking that into account I felt like the story just lingered in a number of places for too long which is funny since it's not a very long book, if you were to pace it a bit more briskly it would have been a very short novel. As hinted at earlier, the characters aren't exactly original and they're a bit too flat to be compelling. I'm not surprised that this is Honeyman's first novel because in some ways it really feels like a first novel, there are some great parts and some needs work parts, nothing terrible but it's not a book I expect to win many awards either. 


In the end I'm going to give this book 3 out of 5 stars, it's the kind of book I'd check out from the library, read once, and not feel the urge to own/re-read. In fact, I think I'm going to swing by the local library and donate this in the hope that this book gets more use that way than it would just sitting on my shelves.