A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I am now in Walnut Creek hotel room with... drum roll...

Naruto # 6

Double Helix

Dogsbody

Angel Sanctuary # 1

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Tipping the Velvet

Stalking the Divine

I was afraid I might not have enough to read, so I overstocked. I knew that would happen.

My SuperShuttle to the airport was late. The flight was uneventful. The driver for the shuttle to the hotel had some of the stinkiest BO I've ever smelled. Every time he moved a wave of smell would attack me like a ninja chakra: "Body Odor of the Bear!"

Yes, I read Naruto on the plane. Also Double Helix.

Naruto # 6, with the kid ninja teams doing their practical final in a forest, was fun but not as funny as # 5, the written final. My favorite joke, a Spinal Tap reference, was probably an inspired piece of translation. The characters are really growing on me, though, and I was annoyed to see that # 7 won't be out for another two months. Why aren't they releasing one per month? I would buy one per month! Heck, I'd buy one per week. Especially since Gaara, who had intrigued me last time, is not in this one. I want to know what he and his team are doing.

Order the series from Amazon: Naruto, Volume 1

Double Helix, by Nancy Werlin. YA suspence/spoiler. 6' 7" and brilliant-at-everything Eli has just graduated from high school, but didn't apply to college. After a huge fight with his father over that, he writes a drunken email to Dr. Wyatt, a famous scientist and former acquaintance of his parents, begging for a job at the lab. To Eli's amazement, Wyatt hires him and takes Eli under his wing. Eli's father hits the roof and demands that he have nothing to do with Dr. Wyatt and his genetics lab, but won't tell him why. Meanwhile, Eli's relationship with his girlfriend is foundering because Eli won't tell her his deep dark secret-- that his mother is dying of Huntington's Disease and Eli refuses to be tested to see if he's inherited the gene or not. But who cares about that when you're being wined and dined by the brilliant Dr. Wyatt, who introduces you to a gorgeous, sexy, and seemingly perfect teenage girl acquaintance of his, and lectures you over dinner with comments like, "We can't sit back and leave science policy in the hands of politicians and pundits or alarmist writers of science fiction. Face it, most people are unbelievable idiots."

You can probably see the problem with the book right there: the basic set-up, although presented as a mystery, is really, really obvious. Dr. Wyatt might as well wear a "Hello, I'm evil" nametag. Though Werlin's style is as page-turning as ever and I admire her willingness to let her protagonist be a real jerk at times, this one lacked the compelling set-up and oddball characters of Locked Inside or the intensity and creepy moral ambiguity of The Killer's Cousin. Though Werlin does come up with one genuinely shocking plot twist toward the end, it loses its potentially devastating impact because the supporting character it involves hasn't been developed enough. And it's not until the last few pages that Werlin seems to remember that genetic research is not the sole property of eeeeevil megalomaniac scientists. The situation at the end of the book, in fact, is in many ways more interesting and angstful and morally complex that the one at the beginning. I don't think she's planning a sequel, though.