{"id":1311,"date":"2014-03-31T17:03:15","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T23:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1311"},"modified":"2014-03-31T17:03:15","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T23:03:15","slug":"s-j-gazan-the-dinosaur-feather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/s-j-gazan-the-dinosaur-feather\/","title":{"rendered":"S.J. Gazan: The Dinosaur Feather"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>This is an original and captivating novel.\u00a0 Set in Copenhagen on the campus of the University of Copenhagen, the politics swirling through academe are apparently brutal to the point of fatality.\u00a0 The central character, Anna Bella Nor, would probably get along well with Lisbeth Salander in terms of both brains and anger.\u00a0 Unlike Lisbeth, she\u2019s more anchored to the world \u2013 she has parents, a toddler, an ex, friends, and she\u2019s juggling the planned defense of her PhD thesis in biology while taking care of her daughter and, it turns out, helping to solve the murders of some colleagues.<\/p>\n

The central academic question at the heart of the novel is whether birds are dinosaurs or if dinosaurs and birds are two distinct species.\u00a0 Anna\u2019s direct supervisor has conducted an almost lifelong fight to the death on the matter with a Canadian ornithologist, Clive Freeman, who insists the two are not related and has the bestseller to prove it.\u00a0 Anna\u2019s supervisor, Dr. Helland, convinces her to take apart Freeman\u2019s thesis as her dissertation subject.<\/p>\n

Gazan manages to make this academic infighting completely fascinating, and as Anna struggles with her thesis the lives of the two men are examined, as is Anna\u2019s.\u00a0 All of them are damaged souls in one way or another.\u00a0 Complicating matters is the early in the story death of Dr. Helland; his manner of death is puzzling, gruesome, and entirely (I certainly hope) original.\u00a0 That\u2019s the kickoff point for a series of events that culminate in several other deaths.<\/p>\n

The policeman in charge of the case is referred to mentally by Anna as the \u201cworld\u2019s most irritating detective\u201d, but in fact he seems good at his job.\u00a0 As it turns out he has his own tormented backstory and he\u2019s strangely drawn to Anna, who he needs to help explain the labyrinthine academic setting and politics.\u00a0 While his partner thinks of Anna as \u201chard work,\u201d Soren, the detective in charge, and Anna have a strange connection that helps to ultimately solve the case.<\/p>\n

As Gazan tells her story, she weaves in the backstories of all the characters, all memorable, all heartbreaking to one degree or another.\u00a0 In this she reminded me of Elizabeth George, though she gets more quickly to the point.\u00a0 However, the keen psychological dissection is present in the writing of both women.<\/p>\n

I loved the academic setting, which might be any university, I think; I loved all the characters, and while I was sometimes annoyed by Anna, I was captivated by her too.\u00a0 I could see why so many people stood by her.\u00a0 This is also a kick-ass story, no two ways about it.\u00a0 The minute you pick this book up, you probably won\u2019t be able to stop reading.\u00a0 I have a weakness for The Big Bang Theory, <\/i>but I even turned that off to read this book instead.\u00a0 This is a big bang for your reading buck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an original and captivating novel.\u00a0 Set in Copenhagen on the campus of the University of Copenhagen, the politics swirling through academe are apparently brutal to the point of fatality.\u00a0 The central character, Anna Bella Nor, would probably get along well with Lisbeth Salander in terms of both brains and anger.\u00a0 Unlike Lisbeth, she\u2019s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-1311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions\/1313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}