Thorin's Review - Divine Misfortune by A. Lee Martinez

Title: Divine Misfortune
Series: N/A
Author: A. Lee Martinez
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Orbit
Received: Purchased
Release Date: April 2011
Pages: 352
Rating:




What it's About:
In a world where deities are numerous and bestow gifts on their attentive followers (and curses on their less attentive ones) it's tough to get by without a little divine help. But the main characters, Teri and Phil, have been trying. The risks of pissing off your patron, not to mention costs of sacrifices and other observations, is totally unappealing to them. They don't want a personal god. But after the keep seeing neighbors and rivals make out better with a little divine help, they give in and get their own god. Nothing too serious, just an easy going, raccoon-headed god of luck name Lucky.
Then he shows up himself on their doorstep like a character Norm MacDonald should be playing, and moves in. He brings in another divine freeloader too, and hilarity ensues. Or, at least it should...

My Thoughts
Really, this is just a soap opera where some of the characters, instead of being pretty white people, are pretty dieties. Any good fantasy book uses the supernatural as metaphores to explore the human condition. This book doesn't use it's gods as metaphores for humans, it just treats them as humans. They have some powers, but those are entirely tangential to the story. The gods are just people too. In fact, you could have substituted the gods with rich benfactors, and it wouldn't change the story at all. It's a cheap gimmick used by a hack to rip out a piece of schlock..

This book wasn't unenjoyable, it's good for an easy beach read I guess, but it totally wastes its central premiss and genre. I wish a better, more creative writer would take this concept and do it justice.

Website:

A. Lee Martinez Official Site
http://www.aleemartinez.com/

Joining the High Summer Read- A -Thon July 25 - July 31

 

 

http://thetruebookaddict.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 The Blog True Book Addict is hosting the High Summer Read - A - Thon from July 25th through July 31st.

I thought I would join and try to catch up on some reading.   So all reviews this week will be of novel or novellas

Here is what I am going to try to get started on reading

The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar

The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by Molly Peacock

The Price of Freedom (Pirates of the Caribbean) by A.C. Crispin

The last is a pretty thick book so hopefully I will get done those.  I would like to do more then three of course but I am going to start with these three and see how i do.

Monday Musing

This a even that takes place at Should Be Reading Blog

Today Question is  

What’s at the top of your must-buy list, right now? (or, if you don’t wait — if you’re more impulsive — what books have you recently purchased?)

I  would say at the top to buy list would be The Autobiograpy of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin I love her first book  Alice I Have Been both are historical fictional based on real people.

Although we were just at a book festival (more on that later) and the book store Most Recently bought was  for me and hubby We Are The Ship    We just recently saw the illustrator/author Kadir Nelson at the Book Festival.

What hubby bought was Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman He already read an enjoyed this book and a new release a Divine Misfortune by A. Lee Martinez .