A box of books arrived today containing several requested titles but the one I've been aching to read was on the bottom - finally, I have my hands on The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing!!!! I have to say, the hardcover is a real beauty. I'm not sure if you BEA folks lucked into this as well, or had ARCs to take home but this is a very well designed book. It jumps out at the casual browser, that's for sure. Can't wait to start this, everyone is in love with it and I'm sure I will be too.

I also received Journey to the Blue Moon which sounds both funny and full of suspense (and incredibly original) and Fire, Bed & Bone, which is out in paperback in October and a bit of a throwback for me to when I loved stories told from an animal's point of view. I'm hoping this one is a good read as I think there is a very important niche in YA for these kinds of books and they are all too often overlooked. (Speaking of animal stories - just read a great article on Jack London in the new issue of The Believer. I wonder how the TEV posters would feel if I called him a YA author for Call of the Wild? Nah...I've sworn off going back there. Last time I checked one guy was referring to Superman as the genre comic of the comic book field - cause you know let's break comics into genres since it works so well in books.....)

I digress - sorry.

Also A Drowned Maiden's Hair which promises to look into the spirituality movement at the turn of the last century and Bloodline, a WWI/Dracula novel which sounds pitch perfect for my October column and I was hoping it would arrive soon as I've decided not to include The Black Tattoo (for all of you wishing I would write a negative review, well this is as close as I will get). The author is asking me to accept too many great leaps of belief in that book and I can't do it Understand, I am a huge fan of Buffy and have been a comic book and sci fi/fantasy reader pretty much all of my life, but that does not mean I will accept anything happening for the sake of a fantastic storyline. Tattoo started off just great and quickly introduced two very engaging teenage boys, Charlie & Jack. Charlie's dad has just left the family and he is pretty torn up by it and Jack is trying to be steadfast and loyal to his best friend in his hour of need. Okay, I'm with all of this. Then in the space of a couple of a pages Charlie mouths off to a guy on the street who then saves him from an ATM type robbery and apparently sees in Charlie's mouthiness the next great thing to save the world. He gets dragged into a test of will (I think) along with Jack - who promptly fails, but Charlie beats the girl who has been training all of her life for this moment.

Okay. Not liking that the girl knows all of this better but the boy has been touched by the gods or something and gets to her level in fifteen minutes. But okay - still hanging in there.

The next day Charlie's back is covered with a mysterious tattoo which he and Jack do not freak out about (really) and they start day one of lessons where the girl goes all Matrix on Charlie but when he really really really concentrates he manages to be faster, stronger and tougher than her. She finally gets a good kick in but it takes all she has and she ends up flattened.

So Charlie is now pretty much king of the good guys. And I'm pretty much done. I think this book has tons of potential, lots of creepy goodness and the author knows his setting - he paints very expressive scenes of modern London - but he's asking the reader to keep accepting those leaps of logic - those amazing "act of God/touched by an angel/chosen one" leaps that really should only happen once in a story if at all. Plus, Charlie just accepts all of this like it's a day at the park. Gwenda had a question a while back on her site about refusing the call - how long should a character question what has happened to them or is asked of them and Catherine Fisher's latest book Corbenic is really all about this (and glowingly reviewed by me next month). But in Tattoo there is no refusal (or at least none in the first third of the book which is how far I have read) and I think that is what has really bothered me. I just can't suspend reason to this extent - I can't believe that anyone (any age, any sex) would act like Charlie (or Jack for that matter). That doesn't mean the book won't work for some readers, but for me it does not.

So crap. I'm passing it by and I wish I wasn't. It sounded so wicked cool and I hate being off the mark on a request like this.

In other packages today a very odd moment of serendipity. I received Rescued from New World Press - it's all about animal rescues during Katrina and places that care for rescued pets as well as what pet owners should plan for and do in the future. This seems perfect for Voices of NOLA and I'm looking foward to it. (In the press copy it states that a recent survey revealed that 40% of Katrina victims did not evacuate because they could not bring their pets.) I also received from Globe Pequot An Unlikely Cat Lady about a Brooklyn woman who has made it her mission to rescue feral cats. I think it's probably a sweet story but it wouldn't have resonated so much with me if it didn't show up the same day as Rescued - and thus make me think of New Orleans author Poppy Z Brite and the many ferals she and her husband care for (several of whom were lost in the hurricane). Although this book is not about Louisiana I think I will include it in my Rescued review. It sounds like they have the same target audience and I want to read it and see how this lady has done the things she has done.

Finally, I saw this in the new issue of Elle - St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. It's a short story collection by debut author Karen Russell (all of 25 years old - oy), where most of the tales take place in Florida. Now I know the Sunshine State (do I ever know the Sunshine State!) and I'd like to see what kind of quirky without being silly writing Russell brings to it. According to Elle this is a "hotly anticipated debut" but I hadn't heard beans until I saw it in the magazine. No matter - there's always room for a short story collection around here. They are great reading material while I'm waiting at swimming lessons!