September 2020 - The Y Logs

Yzabel / September 23, 2020

Review: The Big Book of Mars

The Big Book of Mars: From Ancient Egypt to The Martian, A Deep-Space Dive into Our Obsession with the Red Planet by Marc Hartzman
My rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb:

Mars has been a source of fascination and speculation ever since the Ancient Sumerians observed its blood-red hue and named it for their god of war and plague. But it wasn’t until 1877, when “canals” were observed on the surface of the Red Planet, suggesting the presence of water, that scientists, novelists, filmmakers, and entrepreneurs became obsessed with the question of whether there’s life on Mars. InThe War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells suggested that we wouldn’t need to make contact with Martians–they’d come for us–while, many years later, Nikola Tesla claimed that he did make contact.

Since then, Mars has fully invaded pop culture. It has its own day of the week (Tuesday, or martis in Latin), candy bar, and iconic Looney Tunes character. It has been the subject of iconic novels and movies, from Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles to Mars Attacks! to The Martian. And it has sparked a space-race feud between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who both hope to send a manned mission to Mars in the near future.

Filled with entertaining history, archival images, pop culture ephemera, and interviews with NASA scientists, The Big Book of Marsis the most comprehensive look at our relationship with Mars–yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Originally, I received an excerpt, but promptly proceeded to order the actual book once I started reading it. (The paper version itself is hefty and printed on thick glossy paper and smells good, and yes, I know, I like smelling my books.)

This book deals with how we have perceived Mars, currently and historically, whether in reality or in fiction works, starting with the Victorian period. It abunds in colourful illustrations, which makes its reading all the more pleasant – especially if you do that in little chunks rather than all at once (but really, “all at once” is very tempting, because it is definitely interesting). The style is fairly humoristic in places, making for an entertaining read on top of an informative one – perhaps even more information would’ve been good here? I can never get enough when it comes to Mars, I guess.

I couldn’t decide at first whether I liked the choice of going by theme rather than purely chronologically, but in the end, the “themed” approach worked well enough. The other way might have been too much of a catalogue of dates. Also, it makes it easier to come back to it later knowing roughly what I’m looking for (“fiction about Mars”, and so on) even if I’ve completely forgotten by then when exactly that “thing” happened.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable book, and a pretty one to boot.

Yzabel / September 15, 2020

Review: The Other People

The Other People by C.J. Tudor
My rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb:

She sleeps, a pale girl in a white room . . .

Three years ago, Gabe saw his daughter taken. In the back of a rusty old car, covered in bumper stickers. He was driving behind the car. He watched her disappear. But no one believes him. Most people believe that his daughter, and wife, are dead. For a while, people believed that Gabe was responsible.

Three years later and Gabe cannot give up hope. Even though he has given up everything else. His home, his job, his old life. He spends his days and nights travelling up and down the motorway, sleeping in his camper van in service stations, searching for the car that took her. Searching for his daughter.

Katie spends a lot of her life in service stations, working as a waitress. She often sees Gabriel, or ‘the thin man’ as she has nicknamed him. She knows his story. She feels for him, because Katie understands what it’s like to lose a loved one. Nine years ago, her father was murdered. It broke her family apart. She hasn’t seen her oldest sister since the day of the funeral; the day she did something terrible.

Fran and her daughter, Alice, put in a lot of miles on the motorway. Not searching. But running. Trying to keep one step ahead of the people that want to hurt them. Because Fran knows the truth. She knows what really happened to Gabe’s daughter. She knows who is responsible. And she knows that if they ever find them, they’re dead.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley and Pigeonhole, in exchange for an honest review.]

The time I needed to read this book doesn’t correspond to how enjoyable it was—I would normally have read it faster, only I made the mistake of starting it during a period where what I really wanted to read was non fiction. So, even though it took me one month to finish, I actually liked it (more than other novels by the same author, in fact).

The story’s premise rests on something a parent’s worst nightmare (or so I assume): seeing their child abducted or killed. One fateful evening, Gabe came back from work only to see his only daughter riding in a stranger’s car, then find out his wife and daughter were savagely murdered… but wasn’t the little girl in a car on the motorway? Since that day, Gabe has been travelling the roads in the hopes of finding information about his missing daughter—a daughter that everyone else sees as dead—aided only by a mysterious man who calls himself “the Samaritan”.

The novel has us follow different characters: Gabe himself, of course, but also Fran and Alice, a woman and her daughter who may or may not have strange powers, and Katie, who works as a waitress in a restaurant off the motorway. While their trajectories appear independent at first, they gradually start to tangle and make sense, for all of them are, in fact, involved in what is unfurling here. This goes on at a pace that I found just right for me—not too quick, not too slow, with just enough information to make me imagine what was going on, without allowing me to guess the ending.

Overall, the story here is dark and creepy, often raising so many questions that one can’t help but wonder if all of them will get answers. And they don’t always—at the end of the novel, there were still a couple of things I couldn’t explain, even though overall there was an explanation to most of the ploy. This was partly annoying (I’m thinking of the ‘supernatural’ aspect here, to be more specific), but I found it didn’t detract from my enjoyment, or not as much as I thought it would, so that still makes it 3.5 stars for me.