2012 book 350

Libba Bray's The Diviners
It seriously took me four tries to read this book, because the first chapter creeped me out so badly that I kept stopping. But since it made so many best-of-the-year lists, I figured I should plow through and finally managed it. And I can see why it made so many lists--it's a very ambitious cross-genre start to a series--but I didn't really love it. There's a lot going on here to like-- a bunch of young people in the 20s with special gifts (some of which turn out to be ridiculously bonkers) are all sort of milling around (presumably eventually they'll band together and form a super-powered posse) while a serial killer's ghost is murdering people for obviously nefarious purposes. Things I liked: flappers, the gay pianist, the black poet. Things I didn't like: general atmosphere of terror, sinister adults, people doing really dumb things all the time, awesome half-Jewish daughter of radicals is sorely underused, too many characters and not enough answers. This is a solid book if you're into creepy weirdness, don't get me wrong, but I'm just not interested in where this series is going to go. B/B+.