Ethan of Athos

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold

Summary (with spoilers):

This is a book of the Vorkosigan series, although where it falls in the series depends on whether you're reading them in chronological order (like me) or in publication order. This book doesn't include the star of the series, Miles Vorkosigan, although he's mentioned a few times.

The book begins on the planet of Athos, an all-male society which reproduces with the help of uterine replicators. Ethan is an obstetrician who is tasked with going off planet to obtain new cultures for the uterine replicators, as their original cultures are becoming non-viable. Although Athos ordered a shipment of new cultures, the shipment that arrived was full of unusable samples.

Ethan is worried about what he will find off-planet. (After all, there are women out there!) Before he leaves, his life partner crashes Ethan's hover car, causing damages that the partner has to pay off with his social credits, which the couple will need if they want to have children. (Ethan desperately wants to be a parent.)

Ethan arrives at Kline Station, where he abruptly gets lost. He asks for directions from a young man, too late realizing that "he" is actually a woman, Elli Quinn. Quinn is a member of the Dendarii mercenaries (who we're first introduced to in the book The Warrior's Apprentice), led by Commander Naismith (aka Miles Vorkosigan).

Ethan plans to find the best planet for ovarian samples and travel there. He leaves his hotel to search for some food, ends up in a shady bar (which he entered because it was the only woman-free place he could find), and gets into a fight. Quinn saves him from this predicament, but he's still too nervous around women to accept an invitation to dinner. While walking back to his hotel, Ethan is kidnapped and interrogated by Millisor and Rau. Seeing that his station map has traces of a bug, they believe Ethan is a spy, and keep questioning him about Terence Cee. The captors reveal a plan to destroy the reproduction centers on Athos and generally blow some stuff up. They send Ethan off with Okita, who has instructions to kill Ethan, but Quinn saves him once again (although she accidentally kills Okita in the process.) Ethan realizes that Quinn was the one who planted the bug on his station map. Also, she's got a contract out on Millisor and his conspirators from the Jackson's Hole house that Athos purchased the ovarian cultures from.

They dispose of Okita in a unit that breaks down organic matter to feed back into the food growing system. Here they meet Helda, a no-nonsense member of the bio-control unit responsible for making sure the space station is free of disease and other contamination.

Fearing for his life, Ethan occupies a new hotel room purchased by Quinn. However, when they get into an argument, he decides to leave. Ethan promptly runs into Rau, who shoots a neural disruptor at him. Ethan flees into a worker closet and dresses himself in a red Docks and Locks jumpsuit. After some more adventures (including a trip to the decontamination ward and a security officer who tries to flirt with him), he's approached by a man who turns out to be Terence Cee.

Cee reveals that he is a telepath, although his powers only work when he ingests a certain chemical. He was part of an experimental project on Cetaganda, along with Janine (his romantic partner and fellow telepath), who was killed after they escaped. He had an ovarian culture made from Janine and put in the Athos shipment, with the hope of immigrating to Athos.

Ethan and Cee meet up with Quinn. They decide to team up, since they all want to find the shipment and/or defeat Millisor and co. When Millisor kidnaps Quinn's cousin Teki (who they involved in a scheme earlier in the book), Quinn calls the bio-control unit, claiming that Millisor has given her an STD. Helda arrives at Millisor's room, along with another tech and a security guard. When Millisor won't open the door, she sucks all the air out of his room, forcing him to come out. Ethan realizes that Helda had to be the one to destroy the cultures, and she admits to the crime, stating that she's hated Athos ever since her son immigrated there.

Everyone gets carted off to decontamination/security, but Quinn disappears. Ethan talks to the captured Millisor, who tells him that Cee wanted to send the cultures to Athos because they contained the recessive gene for telepathy. Because of the unusual means of reproduction on Athos, the gene would have eventually invaded the entire planet.

Ethan gets a call from Cee, asking to meet at a docking area. On the way there, a man in a pink suit gives him a message device for Millisor. Once Ethan gets there, he realizes that Cee was forced to lure him into a trap. The escapee Millisor appears, pointing a neural disruptor at Quinn. Ethan mentions the message thing, which turns out to be a bomb. Quinn activates it. Then some dudes from the Jackson's Hole house show up and shoot Millisor/Rau. They also pop out Quinn's elbow for not completing her contract.

Ethan visits Quinn in the hospital. He asks her to donate an ovary to Athos, and she agrees. They all go to pick up some newts that Quinn stored in cold storage. She plans to use the shipment as a cover for the biological material Cee gave her (so that the Dendarii mercenaries can study telepathy). Ethan looks out into space and sees that the boxes housing the original ovarian cultures are floating there. (It turns out when you "throw things out" on a space station, they might just get chucked into space.) Cee and Ethan recover the cultures, without telling Quinn. Ethan tells Cee that they can bring the cultures back to Athos, therefore setting up a world of telepaths, because Ethan fears that Athos will not survive in the future without some edge.

Ethan and Cee arrive on Athos, where it's revealed that Ethan's life partner has run off. It's implied that Ethan and Cee may become a couple.

My Thoughts:
As always, McMaster Bujold delivers an exciting novel with a rip-roaring plot.

Pros:
*Fun and easy to read
*Funny in parts (especially Quinn's antics and Ethan's view of women)
*I like the idea of a world without women. (Usually the stories of single-gender planets and reproduction involve no men. This was a good twist on that idea.)
*Good depiction of life on a space station (including their obsession with contamination)

Cons:
*Strange to have a book without Miles as a character
*Some of the plot seems slapped together. Parts of it move so quickly that it's hard to keep up or really see if it makes sense.
*Having the Jackson's Hole people come in at the last minute seems too deus ex machina

Overall, this book was another great addition to the series. I feel it didn't move the series along much, except to introduce Quinn as a character. So far, Ethan hasn't come back in later books, so it's strange to know I've spent a whole book with a POV character that won't appear again.

Gateway

Gateway
Frederick Pohl

Summary (with spoilers):

When Robinette (Bob) Broadhead wins the lottery, he spends the money to get out of his job at the food mines and travel to Gateway, a space station built by long-gone alien civilization called the Heechee. The story is told by shifting between two time periods: flashbacks of Bob's experiences at Gateway and his sessions with his robot physiologist, whom he calls Sigfrid, in the present.

Gateway was abandoned by the Heechee, but it still has working space ships. Prospectors travel in the ships to unknown locations, where they hope to strike it rich by finding a cache of Heechee artifacts or by getting a large science or danger bonus from the Gateway corporation. There are 3 types of ships (Ones, Threes, and Fives), named based on the number of personnel they can hold. The humans haven't figured out what most of the stuff in the ship does or how to tell where the ships are going.

Bob starts dating Sheri, a woman in his class on Gateway, but they break up when he decides not to go on a mission with her. The truth is, Bob is scared to go on any missions. The majority of them don't return. 

He starts dating Gelle-Klara Moynlin, a woman who has been out on two missions, but who is also scared to go out on any. Eventually, they go out in a Five with three gay men. They aren't able to land on the planet they pop out next to, so their mission is not very profitable. One of the men goes insane.

When Klara and Bob get back, they grow apart. Bob sleeps with Louise Forehand (who is waiting for her family to get back before going on a mission, although her daughter has been out long enough that she is probably dead.) Klara sleeps with Dane Metchnikov, who was Bob's assigned mentor when he first arrived at Gateway. Bob and Klara get in an argument, and when Klara punches Bob in the shoulder, Bob beats her up really badly.

Klara leaves on a ship for Venus, and Bob signs up for a One mission. At the end of several months, he arrives at Gateway II, a known location. In anger that his trip has been useless, he changes the settings in his Heechee ship, and becomes the first person to break a ship without having it explode.

Back on Gateway, the scientists have some new ideas about what the colored bars in the ship panels mean in relation to coordinates. They plan to send two Fives out to the same destination, posting a hefty danger bonus. Bob and Dane Metchnikov end up in one ship. Bob's legless friend Shikitei Bahkin wants to go, but Bob doesn't put in a good word for him. (As you may have realized by this point, Bob is a selfish jerk.) Klara shows up and signs up with the other Five. The two ships pop out at the destination. It is a black hole! They all try to pile into one ship so that they can use the momentum of the other ship to push them out of the black hole. They only have a few minutes to transfer everything in and out between the ships, and in the hustle, Bob is the only one who is not able to get back to the correct ship in time. Instead, he punts the other 9 people into the black hole to save himself by using the momentum of their ship.

Throughout the book, Bob is going to the robot psychologist, and at the end, finally reveals this secret. Also, due to issues of time and black holes, although years have passed for Bob, only a few seconds have passed for Klara and the crew. Knowing that Klara is out there somewhere probably at that second (in her time) thinking Bob is an awful guy makes Bob feel even guiltier.

****EDIT*****

Okay, so wiki says that actually Bob was trying to close the hatch and then push the other ship away to safety, but that somehow his ship was the one that got pushed out of the black hole. I read that part again, and it's ambiguous what actually happened. Bob also seems not to know what his intentions where, or if someone on the other ship pushed a button first. He's convinced himself that he was trying to save himself. Unclear what actually happened.

My Thoughts:
I liked the first part of the book better than the ending, mostly because the main character becomes less likable throughout. Learning about the Heechee was interesting. I especially liked that the book had these little asides (snippets of lectures on the Heechee, classified ads on Gateway, etc.) However, the asides took up a full page each time and were placed somewhat randomly throughout the book, often cutting a sentence in half or detracting from the action. I would have preferred if they were placed more strategically for minimal disruption of reading flow.

Bob is revealed to be a fairly terrible guy. I can understand that in a fit of fear he punted the 9 other people into the black hole. That's a rotten thing to do, but it's a move I think a lot of people would make to survive. However, Bob becomes an unsympathetic character when he beats up his girlfriend. (It's so bad that she looses a tooth.) He feels remorse for beating her up, but not enough to satisfy me. Also, she shows up randomly and forgives him, which I didn't like.

There are problems with how the missions are set up. Throughout the book, many prospectors die because they run out of food, and all prospectors are worried about resources until they reach turnaround (the half way point of the trip out). If this is such a big problem, why don't they send out less people in the bigger ships? They could send out two people in a Five with a lot more food. In the story, when one of the longer missions fails, it's even noted that perhaps one person in the Five could have survived. Also, when a prospector dies during the trip, the other prospectors split the money she would have earned. When Bob dooms his nine shipmates to drawn out death by black hole, he actually makes 9 million dollars. If I were a prospector, that would make me nervous.

An interesting theme is the emotions/humanity of robots, as shown by Sigfrid, who reveals at the end of the book that he hypothetically envies Bob's ability to feel emotions, even though Bob feels negative emotions like guilt. 

Endless Night

Endless Night
Agatha Christie

Summary (with spoilers):

Michael Rogers, our first-person narrator, is a ne'er-do-well who takes in interest in a land sale of Gipsy's Acre, even though he's been warned that the place is cursed. While looking at the property, he meets Ellie, a rich American. She doesn't have any real family, just a bunch of relations by marriage, like her step-mother Cora, who are reliant on Ellie's wealth. Michael and Ellie meet secretly, with the help of Ellie's assistant Greta, and eventually get married. Ellie has purchased Gipsy's Acre, so the couple hires Santonix, architect with a fatal illness and friend of Michael, to build them a house.

However, a gypsy women keeps warning them to leave, and someone throws a rock through their window. Michael and Ellie meet some neighbors, Major Philpot and Claudia, who was previously married to Ellie's banker, Stanford Lloyd. When Ellie sprains an ankle, Greta comes to live with them. Michael and Greta don't get along, and Michael had tried to hold off meeting her for as long as possible.

***SPOILER: I'M GOING TO REVEAL THE MURDERER*****

The murder happens near the end of the novel. While Michael is away at an auction, Ellie goes out riding, and is later found in the woods, dead. Michael goes to America to settle the business affairs, since the majority of her fortune has been transferred to him. Her lawyer, Lippincott, is suspicious of Michael. On the boat ride home, Michael reveals to the reader that he has been in love with Greta all along, and that they planned from the beginning to have Michael marry Ellie, and then kill her for her money. (We later learn this isn't the first time he's murdered for personal gain.)

Michael arrives back at Gipsy's Acre to celebrate. On the road up, he thinks he sees Ellie, but she looks right through him. Upon his reunion with Greta, he freaks out, quoting a song that Ellie often sang about how some are born to "sweet delight" and others born to "endless night." Realizing that he could have been happy with Ellie, Michael strangles Greta in a rage. Soon after, others arrive and he is caught.

My Thoughts:

I felt cheated by this book. The main character is the murderer and he's been lying to us all of this time? Really? If the main character is lying to me the entire book, I want it to be done well, like it was with Gone Girl. Although the narrator is strange, I don't think there's enough evidence to show that he's a serial killer.

Ellie is a tragic character. No one in her life truly loves her. Her best friend and husband, the people that should care for her most, are the ones who plot to kill her. Perhaps Christie is commenting on the difficulty of having lots of money.

There were a few other literary elements that didn't go anywhere. Michael frequently describes Major Philpot as God. (In fact, the sentence that introduces him to the reader is something like, "we met God today.") In contrast, Santonix, whose name sounds vaguely like Satan, struggles with evil himself. Since he's ill, Santonix says that he can do whatever he wants without fear of repercussion, since he will die soon anyway. Perhaps Michael is supposed to be torn between these two forces, but this doesn't play out well in the book. Upon his death bed, Santonix even tells Michael that Michael should have gone the other way.

Another baffling thing about this book is that the murder doesn't happen until almost the end. The work mostly focuses on character development, but since it's Christie, I'd rather be looking for clues.

Overall, this was an unsatisfying work. I enjoyed it while reading, but I didn't like the ending.

Slapstick

Slapstick

Kurt Vonnegut

Summary (with spoiler):

The book follows the life of Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, a deformed twin who eventually becomes president of the United States. Wilbur and his twin Eliza are mutants, assumed to be mentally deficient. They live the first 15 years of their lives in a large mansion with special helpers, pretending to be mentally challenged. When their parents come to visit, and their mother reveals she wishes they were intelligent, they reveal their ruse. As it turns out, Wilbur and Eliza are geniuses when in close physical contact, although when they are separated, they are fairly normal.

After an unfortunate intelligence test where the twins become too physically close, Wilbur is sent to school, while Eliza is sent to an institution. She is later released, and comes to visit Wilbur (although she is somewhat angry that he never came to help her.) Eliza reaches out to touch Wilbur, and upon contact have a days-long orgy.

Meanwhile, China has developed a method to shrink people so that they use less resources. Wilbur is visited by a tiny Chinese person, who asks for some of the writings Wilbur and Eliza created as kids. Eliza is given a ticket to Mars, where she soon dies in an avalanche.

Wilbur becomes president of the US, but everything is falling apart. No fuel, plague, etc. Wilbur institutes an idea he and his sister came up with long ago, to assign everyone new middle names, creating artificial families. After the presidency falls apart, he lives on Manhattan, which has been ravaged by the "Green Death," later revealed to be caused when a normal-sized person accidentally inhales a miniature person. He meets a few people from the Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped, communicates with his sister in the afterlife through use of a strange machine, travels to see the King of Michigan, and dies shortly after his birthday party.

My thoughts:

Vonnegut has a style of writing all his own. He uses these short passages, often just a few paragraphs at a time, which somehow makes it impossible to stop reading. I enjoyed how he described the bizarre elements as if they were completely ordinary, so that I could easily believe the world Vonnegut created.

He begins the book with an introduction, where he says that this work is the most autobiographical one he's likely to write, noting that "it is about what life feels like to me." He thought of the book idea while on a plane to his uncle's funeral. In the introduction, he also meditates on his sister's death. And in the book, this is how things go. People die. Most people catch the plague. People come into and out of Wilbur's life without warning. There isn't a reason why things happen, just like in real life.

Part of the interest of this novel is what Vonnegut chooses to emphasize. Wilbur's marriage is first described in just 2 pages, and his wife is rarely mentioned again. His sister is center stage with Wilbur during the first half of the book. Then they are separated, he basically forgets about her, and then she dies. However, Eliza is central to the novel. Even though he doesn't see her much after childhood, or before her death, Wilbur constantly mentions his sister and their ideas.

Overall, this was a fun and quick read that also made me think. I enjoyed Vonnegut's imaginative voice, and I liked the concept of life as slapstick. I've felt that way, too.

On summarizing

Everyone remembers a book differently. We filter the book through our own experiences, highlighting and understanding themes, character motivations, and plot elements in a way that makes sense to us. Summarizing these books has made me realize how much I draw on my own ideas of life when I read. The act of summarizing is half science, half art. It's not possible to include everything that happens in the book (for that is the book itself), so I have to ask which plot points are important enough to make it into the summary.

For example, I'm reading this Vonnegut book right now. (His writing style is hard enough to summarize, because it's so unique). There's a few pages that discuss the National Archives. Being an archivist, that part grabbed my attention, even though it's not integral to the plot. I'll probably put that bit in my summary, since it impacted me, but someone else would choose another bit to pull out.

And what about the stuff I leave out? In my summaries, I've left out important parts that I was just too lazy to put in, or that I felt wasn't needed for me to remember the book. Sometimes I leave out bits I didn't like. Sometimes I leave out boring bits. Sometimes, like with The Peril at End House, I just don't feel like putting in all of the clues, so that the experience of reading the summary is a completely different one from the experience of reading the book.

Character description is another element that doesn't come across well in summaries, since my idea of a character is built up over dialogue and even the smallest action. I can use any adjective to describe a character (funny, intelligent, etc.) but it's hard to explain why I perceive a character to be that way without specific examples. I'm not looking to do a close reading or an English essay.

Doing these summarizes has also let me understand why I forget books so easily soon after I've read them. Simply, there is a lot to remember.

Peril at End House

Peril at End House
Agatha Christie

Summary (with spoilers):
Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings are on vacation. Poirot is retired, but wait, is that a bullet zooming past!? Yes, the beautiful Magdala Buckley, known to everyone as  "Nick," is in peril. She's narrowly escaped harm in a string of accidents, and Poirot believes that her life is in danger.


So who is the would-be murderer? The suspects are:
Charles Vyse: Cousin and lawyer
George Challenger: In love with Nick
Ellen + family: Servants
Frederica Rice: Best friend
Jim Lazarus: An art dealer and boyfriend of Rice
Mr. and Mrs. Croft: Couple from Australia living on the estate of End House. Mrs. Croft is paralyzed

Poirot suggests that Nick have a friend (other than Ms. Rice) stay with her. Nick telegraphs her cousin Maggie. During a dinner and fireworks party, Nick (who is wearing black, a color she never usually wears), goes inside to replace her shawl with something warmer. Her cousin follows to get a coat. Poirot, whose feet are getting wet, goes into the house and discovers that someone has been shot. At first, he believes it to be Nick, because the victim is wearing Nick's shawl, but in fact it is the cousin, Maggie.
After the shock, Nick is persuaded to stay at a hospital (which is really just for her protection.) No one is allowed to see her. Poirot does some snooping about. He finds that Nick was secretly engaged to the airman Michael Seton, who is probably dead. Seton, conveniently, has just inherited a large fortune. While in the hospital, Nick eats some chocolates which she thinks were sent by Poirot, but which were laced with cocaine. 

There are lots of clues, but I'll just talk about the giveaway clue. While looking for a will that Nick drew up, Poirot finds some love letters from Seton that are fishy. There aren't a lot of them, and it's clear that more were written than the bundle that Nick kept.
Poirot finally figures things out. He decides to  tell everyone that Nick is dead, and stages a dinner party at End House with all of the suspects. Nick's will, which has been missing for the entire book, mysteriously shows up. Charles Vyse reads the will, which says that all of Nick's assets are to be left to Mrs. Croft. Nick shows up, pretending to be a ghost, and Chief Inspector Japp also makes an appearance, revealing that Mrs. Croft is actually a scammer who forged the will.

Spoiler alert: I'M GOING TO REVEAL THE MURDERER NOW!

Twist! The murderer is actually Nick. It was her cousin, whose full name is the same as Nick's, who was engaged to Seton. Nick killed her cousin so that she could pretend to be Seton's fiance and inherit all of his money. Tricky.

My Thoughts:
I haven't read much Christie (or many mysteries, for that matter), but I preferred And Then There Were None. I didn't see the ending of The Peril at End House coming, although I thought the letters were a bit weird. It crossed my mind that Nick might not actually have been engaged to Seton, but then when he uses her name in a letter, I thought that he must have been. (Totally didn't think about how her cousin could have the same name).

It was easy to read, but the mystery didn't grab me that much. There were all of those clues, but I wanted to breeze through to see what happened. Enjoyable, but forgettable. 

The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy

J. K. Rowling

Summary (with spoilers): The book opens with the sudden death of Barry Fairbrother, beloved citizen of the town of Pagford and member of the parish council. Barry grew up in the Fields, a piece of land within the jurisdiction of Pagford, but that contains houses built by the neighboring town of Yarvil. Before Barry's death, the council was mired in a decision about whether to keep the Fields, which are slums housing the poor, or whether turn over the jurisdiction for the Fields and their associated costs to Yarvil.

 The reader is quickly introduced to a number of point of view characters, which J. K. Rowling switches between effortlessly throughout the book.

 Mary Fairbrother: Wife of Barry. Grieving widow.
Howard Mollison: Anti-Fields council member and rival of Barry. Owns a deli with Maureen Lowe. Extremely obese.
Shirley Mollison: Wife of Howard. Dislikes her daughter-in-law, Samantha. Miles Mollison: Son of Howard and Shirley. Has a law practice. Runs for Pagford council (anti-Fields).
Samantha Mollison: Wife of Miles. Immature and unhappy. Obsessed with a boy band.
Colin Wall: Husband of Tessa. Headmaster of the high school. Runs for Pagford council (pro-Fields).
Stuart (Fats) Wall: Adopted son of Colin and Tessa. Best friends with Andrew Price. Sleeps with Krystal Weedon. Wants to be "authentic," but really uses that as an excuse to be a jerk and do whatever he wants. Makes fun of Sukhvinder.
Andrew Price: Best fried of Fats. In love with Gaia. Simon Price: Father of Andrew and husband of Ruth. Prone to fits of rage, where he hits his family.
 Gaia Bawden: Daughter of Kay. Unhappy that she has been forced to move to Pagford from London.
Kay Bawden: Social worker, carrying for the Weedon family for most of the book. Moved to Pagford for a relationship with Gavin.
Gavin Hughes: Law partner of Miles. Later realizes he's in love with Mary.
Krystal Weedon: Lives in the Fields. Mother is a drug addict.
 Parminder Jawanda: Doctor married to the super hot Vikram. Pro-Fields council member.
 Sukhvinder Jawanda: Daughter of Parminder. Teased at school. Friend of Gaia.

 The book centers around the relationship between all of these characters, whose lives are intertwined in the small town of Pagford. The first main plot point occurs when Andrew Price, deciding to get revenge on his father, hacks into the Pagford council website and posts as "The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother," revealing that his father's criminal activities, like buying a stolen computer and doing after-hours jobs at work. Sukhvinder follows suit, claiming that her mother was in love with Barry. Fats, another child angry at his parents, posts about his father's OCD. Scandal ensues.

 Meanwhile, Howard is pushing for a vote on the Fields and also whether to close Bellchapel, the drug addiction clinic which is currently helping Krystal's mother Terri Weedon. Parminder gets so angry that she says Howard has also cost the government a lot of money by gorging himself to obesity, and reveals other health information about him.

 Miles wins the parish council election.

Gaia, Sukhvinder, and Andrew, who have gotten jobs at Howard's deli, are asked to assist at his birthday celebration. Gaia and Andrew get drunk, Fats shows up, and Gaia ends up kissing Fats, to the dismay of Andrew. Samantha, who is distraught because she did not get to attend the concert of the boy band she is obsessed with, also gets roaringly drunk, and ends up kissing Andrew (who is 25 years her junior.) Her husband Miles walks in on them in the kitchen. Howard's daughter, who also doesn't like her parents (I'm sensing a theme here), reveals to Andrew that Howard had an affair with Maureen. Since Andrew feels some guilt for posting that message about his dad, which resulted in Simon being fired, Andrew reveals Howard's secret to Simon, and they post about it on the Pagford council website, which still has lax security.

When Shirley reads the message the next day, she confronts Howard, who does not immediately deny the affair. When Shirley returns to the house, she plans to kill Howard with an EpiPen (which the deli kept in case Andrew had an allergic reaction). However, she finds Howard is already in the middle of a heart attack. Miles runs to Parminder for help, but Parminder refuses to see to Howard because she is under review by the medical board, and does not want to practice until she is cleared.

Krystal, who lives in the Fields with her unstable mother, gets sexually assaulted by her mom's drug dealer. A few days later, she finds the man in a room with her little brother, Robbie. Afraid for her brother's safety, she takes him on a bus to Pagford. Krystal believes that if she becomes pregnant with Fats' child, his family will have to take care of her. She convinces Fats to sleep with her in some bushes, and tells her little brother to stay put. Robbie falls into a nearby river. Sukhvinder, who happens to be walking along, jumps into the river to save the boy, but she is too late. When the police return Krystal to her home, Krystal knowingly takes an overdoes of heroin, which kills her. The book ends with the double funeral of Krystal and Robbie.

There's a lot more I didn't summarize, but those are the main points.

My Thoughts:
Pros:
 -Despite being about council politics, the book was exciting
 -Masterfully switches between point of view characters
 -Characters were real and well-rounded. Their motivations were believable.

 Cons:
 -Difficult to keep up with all of the characters introduced at the beginning of the novel
-Although the decision around the Fields is a central focus of the book, the actual decision is anti-climatic. No one cares about the decision, except for Howard, who promptly has a heart attack
-It was weird reading about all of the sex/drugs and thinking "this never would have happened in the Harry Potter books!"
-The relationship between Fats and Andrew was not resolved. The book closes with the two friends not speaking, even though Andrew will soon move away from Pagford. Since they've been best buds since they were 4, I don't buy that they'd just cut off all communication, even though Fats is devastated about the deaths of Robbie and Krystal.

After my disappointment with the seventh Harry Potter book, I thought J.K. Rowling might have lost her touch as a writer. However, I found the Casual Vacancy to be well done and engaging.