{"id":1067,"date":"2010-10-20T14:49:17","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T19:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2010-10-20T14:49:17","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T19:49:17","slug":"return-to-cookieland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2010\/10\/20\/return-to-cookieland\/","title":{"rendered":"Return to Cookieland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gingerbread Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen #13.5)<\/b>
\nAs noted in my post ‘Too Many Christmases<\/a>‘ this novella takes place in December following book #13, which occurred in the summertime. Interestingly, Hannah’s sister Michelle isn’t even mentioned in this book, even though it’s timed so that theoretically she could be there. Because this is a novella rather than a novel, there’s little time to focus on much more than the mystery, featuring as it does several new characters who must be introduced and given some backstory. As a result, most of the developments in Hannah’s personal life from #13 are either not addressed or sort of postponed until the next full length novel — we’re told right from the start that the potential conflict involving Norman is going to arrive ‘on January 15th’. The mystery itself involves the murder of a neighbor of Hannah’s, a man who fairly recently won $8 million in the lottery. Unfortunately, there are several missteps here, and I again have to wonder where Fluke’s editor was. Leaving out the entire climax, which was borderline silly, the biggest issue was the victim’s ex-wife, who completely flipped out after the murder and started spouting nonsense. She claimed ‘there’s no way I would have killed him, he was going to pay for our kids to go to college and now their futures are destroyed’! Uhh. What? The kicker here is that this woman WORKS FOR A LAWYER. How does she not know that if her ex died intestate, as she does believe, her kids inherit EVERYTHING?! In fact, assuring her kids’ futures before her ex could spend all the money makes her a very GOOD suspect indeed. Except Hannah and the police(!) accept this explanation and look elsewhere for the murderer. Gah. The police especially are getting stupider and stupider over time, completely incapable of solving even the smallest crime without Hannah’s assistance.<\/p>\n

Invitation to the Game<\/b>
\nI had never heard of this YA sci-fi book until it was recommended to J and then she suggested I read it too. The first thing I noticed about the book was that there was an actual person of color on the cover. This was especially interesting after I read it, because it never actually registered with me that any of the characters were specifically mentioned as being black. In fact, the only character I recall anything about description-wise, besides the boy described as ‘pudgy’ is the redhead. I’m not sure why authors always make a point of repeatedly calling attention to someone’s red hair, but it’s extremely common. Anyway, the book made a good first impression even though the artwork on the cover is extremely dated (it was published in 1990, so I’m guessing the cover was drawn sometime in the 80s and possibly not even for this book, though that’s harder to say.) The story itself was less impressive, though not bad. The action begins in an unlikely future US where robots have replaced almost all workers and unemployment has been institutionalized — people are assigned jobs at age 16 when they finish school, and if you aren’t assigned one then, you are unemployed for the rest of your life. The unemployed are then sent to live in particular areas, provided with the bare necessities of life, and left to their own devices as long as they don’t get violent. This isn’t a new idea; it’s been explored in many different venues, including several episodes of Deep Space Nine. But it doesn’t seem all that likely to me. The parents especially are baffling — later in the book several teens who were<\/i> assigned jobs and went back to live with their parents are fired due to robotization and brought to join the unemployed. Would parents really allow this? To say bye to their children at age 6 with no expectation or promise of ever seeing them again, to let them be removed randomly from their care at age 16 again without any expectation of seeing them again? The whole situation just doesn’t ring true. And when there’s what I consider a fundamental flaw with the world-building, it colors the entire story. In any case, our group of intrepid and crazily unhormonal teens end up living on their own. Eventually they hear of ‘The Game’, which may be a way out of the numbing unemployed holding zone. They’re eventually asked to participate, and from there must solve the mystery of what The Game really is. (Though they don’t, actually, until the answer is thrust upon them.) So… like I said, I’m a bit torn on this one. There were good points and there were ridiculous points. The good didn’t quite outweigh the ridiculous, but the end result wasn’t terrible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gingerbread Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen #13.5) As noted in my post ‘Too Many Christmases‘ this novella takes place in December following book #13, which occurred in the summertime. Interestingly, Hannah’s sister Michelle isn’t even mentioned in this book, even though it’s timed so that theoretically she could be there. Because this is a novella rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1067"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1067\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}