A Mini Romance Binge

Okay, so the first book in this list isn't a romance, but it does have some love and some sex, so it's not totally out of place.

'The Tempering of Men' is the (unexpected) sequel to Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear's 'A Companion to Wolves', which I loved when I read it a few years back. It helps that I'm completely fangirly-smitten over both of these authors individually. Combining their rather spectacular storytelling skills on anything makes that work not just a must-read, but a put-everything-else-aside-and-read-it-now. Thankfully, 'Men' lived up to the promise of 'Wolves' or I would've probably been pissed that I had put other books on hold so that I could get to this one. The only disappointment I had with 'Men' is that it is very obviously only the start of a story arc. There is (I hope, anyway) a sequel somewhere down the road that will pick up and finish the story started here. (If not, I may get all petulant and decide to never, ever read another book by either author ever again.) I love the world that Monette and Bear have created, with its roots in Norse myth and history and I'm glad that they've decided to explore it further. I only wish that 'Men' had had more of an ending, or that the third book was just around the corner.

'Blood of the Wicked' by Karina Cooper is the first book in a new post-Apocalyptic paranormal romance series. It's set in New Seattle and has something to do with witches and a sorta religious organization that's hunting them and...I don't know. The world-building on this was not really very strong. There was an earthquake and Seattle fell into a chasm and was rebuilt as some towering something that looks like a great chrome and glass wedding cake. But, I have no idea where the witches came from or the guys who are hunting them. There's no real explanation for why the witches are viewed as evil and in need of extermination. There's not even a strong enough religious element for me to draw comparisons to the hysteria surrounding the Salem witch trials. The action was okay, as was the love story, but without a strong, logical world in which to set them, the book as a whole just didn't quite work.

'Just One Season in London' by Leigh Michaels is an historical romance set during--you guessed it--one Season in London. It revolves around the three members of a family that has fallen into financial disarray so that at least one member of the family must marry money to save the family from poverty. There are three love stories intertwined in this book--those of the mother, daughter, and son--and the way they weave in and out of one another is very well done. Dividing one book between three stories led me to expect that at least one story would be short-changed, but I didn't feel that any of them were. I found I actually liked the changing perspective because it meant that I never had a chance to get bored with any of the couples.

'The Bride Wore Scarlet' by Liz Carlyle had an amazing title, that, as far as I can tell, had nothing to do with the contents of the book. It's a paranormal historical in the vein of Amanda Quick. And, unlike the Karina Cooper, the world-building here was solid. I understood the secret society at the center of the plot and how it related to other, similar societies around the world and I understood the mission the hero and heroine were on and why they were on it. I liked the hero and heroine, and I liked them together. I liked that the heroine had all kinds of skills, but never felt Mary Sue-ish. I didn't realize until I was well into the story that it was the second in a trilogy. I think I'll track down the first, and keep an eye out for the third.

Not Much to Say

'Dark Souls' by Paula Morris is an okay YA about a girl who can see ghosts visiting York with her family. It's not a bad read, but there's nothing about it to either praise or condemn, either. Okay. Maybe one thing. I wish it had been spookier. The heroine reads both 'Northanger Abbey' and 'The Mysteries of Udolpho' over the course of the book, and, yet, there was none of that creepy Gothic tension. No questioning what is happening or who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

'Another Piece of My Heart' by Jane Green is a novel I received in a very early manuscript form, so I don't feel comfortable saying anything about it. I mean, I haven't even told the person who gave it to me what I think, and that has to come first. I'll only say that I liked it much more than I expected to.

I Wanna Be Somewhere Sunny

I just finished Don Winslow's 'The Gentlemen's Hour' and it really brought home to me how miserable our late-onset spring really is. I mean, the man's writing about a Southern California full of cartels and sleazy developers and torturers-for-hire and all I can think is that at least the damned sun is shining.

I'm not a surfer. Never have been. Haven't ever even really known any. Couldn't tell you diddly about the sport except what's glaringly obvious--it's athletic people balancing on boards in the ocean. However, I love Don Winslow's mysteries set in the surfing community in and around San Diego. Even a complete outsider like me can understand the surfing mindset and culture a little, the way Winslow writes about it. Plus, the guy knows how to plot a decent mystery. I think it's highly unfortunate that probably his best-known book is 'Savages', which isn't about this culture at all. That's not to say that 'Savages' is a bad book, by any means. It's just missing that ineffable something that makes his "surf" books such must-reads for me. 'The Gentlemen's Hour' is the second Winslow title to feature PI Boone Daniels and the members of the Dawn Patrol (the first was 'The Dawn Patrol', natch) and I really, really hope he has plans to give these characters a longer series. Unlike a lot of characters in crime fiction, these are the kinds of folks I, at least, wouldn't mind hanging out with in real life, so spending several hundred more pages with them would be no kind of hardship. It doesn't hurt, either, that, where these guys are, the sun seems always to be shining, even while the shit rains down.

And, right now, I could do with a little more sunshine.

Cyborgs Pirates and Vamps

Oh, my!

Nothing angst-y, drama-y this time around.

'Jennifer Government' by Max Barry is one of those novels that I pretty much fell in love with as soon as I started reading. Which is unfortunate for Mr. Barry because it means that it's the novel against which I will always judge anything else he commits to paper. 'Machine Man' is his newest book and, while I enjoyed the bejeezus out of it, it didn't inspire 'Jennifer Government' levels of glee. Barry's a good satirist and is adept at taking a semi-plausible near-future premise and stretching it out to a truly absurd level. This time, it's a lab geek who, after an unfortunate accident, seizes on the idea of making himself a better man through prosthetics. Of course, the company he works for wants nothing more than to use his ideas for their own financial gain and things go ridiculously off the rails. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read and was a great transition from the High Drama of the last couple of books on my list.

Tawna Fenske is an Oregon author whose debut(?) romance, 'Making Waves', is one of those over-the-top frothy concoctions that is best paired with a fruity cocktail with an umbrella in it. It's got contemporary pirates (though not the scary realistic sort) and a tropical setting and porn-tastic descriptions of food. There's a stowaway, a diamond heist, and a laugh-out-loud stretch of dialogue where our hero and heroine overhear a couple having "tacky sex". If you've got a couple of hours to kill while lounging in a poolside chaise and being served the aforementioned fruity cocktails, this is the book to have stashed in your tote.

And, okay, now it gets a little more serious, but in a paranormal kinda way.

'Bloodlines' by Richelle Mead is a spin-off from (continuation of?) her YA Vampire Academy series. Two characters who have played important supporting roles in the original series of books, Adrian Ishakov and Sydney Sage, take center stage here. If you haven't read the original novels, this probably isn't a good place to start. Although Mead does a fine job of giving the plot points from those earlier books that influence the events here, there is a lot of character background and inter-personal stuff that would make little sense to a new reader. But, for anyone who's read the Vampire Academy books, it's great to see familiar characters in new ways and in new combinations. There are a lot of seeds planted in this "first" book for what may unfold as the series continues and they're very intriguing. My only regret is that I read this in one sitting and didn't stretch it out longer. Who knows how long it'll be before I get another new Richelle Mead novel? I should've tried to make this one last.

Death and the Inquisition

I am so completely in the mood for something cheerful after the last two books I read.

Amy Ackley's 'Sign Language' is a really, really, really good YA that had me getting all misty-eyed. It covers a period of about three years in Abby's life; a period during which Abby's father is diagnosed with, suffers from, and eventually dies of cancer. It is not a sunny, on-the-beach kind of book. At the start of the book, Abby is twelve, going on thirteen. She's fifteen at the end. So, during a time when most girls already have it rough just dealing with hormonal changes and the shift to the brutal world of high school, Abby's family is falling apart around her. By the book's close, Abby has gotten to a place of hope, if not happiness, but the journey there is not easy on her or the reader.

'Josefina's Sin' by Claudia H. Long is a book that I picked up because it is set in New Spain during the period of the Inquisition and features the poetess Sor Juana as a central character. It's a decent piece of historical fiction, set in a time and place not normally seen in fiction. It was, of course, as these things so often are, full of courtly intrigues and backstabbing bitches and adultery and guilt and just basketsfull of High Drama and there wasn't much unique about its country-miss-goes-to-court plot. Nor were the characters anything revelatory, and most were little more than stereotypes, with the occasional step over the line into caricature. However, the nuns--Sor Juana and her sisters--were interesting and the villains were so villainous that I kept reading just so I could get to the part where they got their comeuppance.

Now it's definitely time for something less drama-y.

It's Gonna Be Long-ish

Four books to report on since I last posted. I'll try to be as succinct as possible.

'Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow' by Katy Towell was a creepy/charming middle reader novel that reminded me of a cross between Lemony Snicket and Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. Our heroes are three girls--one who may be a werewolf, one who is freakishly strong, and one who talks to ghosts (but only of animals because people-ghosts scare her)--and one boy who is clever with inventions. The setting is a town where, several years previously, a large storm opened up a gateway through which all manner of creature came. The town is all but closed to outsiders until a new librarian and a candy man show up. Of course, when people start disappearing, it is up to our group of outcasts to get to the bottom of the weird goings-on. The book is charmingly odd without ever being too scary and Ms. Towell's illustrations, especially of the children, are a nice addition. (I think Beatrice, the one who talks to ghosts, is quite spookily lovely and should star in her own series of picture books.)

'Germline' by T.C. McCarthy is very much not my usual cup of tea. However, it's being published by Orbit, and I've come to the conclusion (yet to be proven wrong, in my experience) that there is pretty much nothing that Orbit publishes, no matter how far out of my comfort zone, that I won't get completely sucked into. 'Germiline' is sorta S-F, but it would be more accurate to call it a near-future military novel. It really is about combat troops and the physical and emotional toll that extended exposure to brutal warfare takes. There's enough (mostly) plausible future tech for it to fit under the Orbit umbrella, but it's still, at heart, a war novel.

'Ingenue' is the second novel in Jillian Larkin's Flappers series of novels. It's like Gossip Girl or The Luxe, so if you don't like that sort of thing, you most certainly won't like this. There are gangsters and speakeasies and jazz and high society and flappers and pretty much every box on some 1920's cliche checklist has been ticked. It's pure guilty pleasure reading and I enjoyed the hell out of every minute of it.

And, finally there's Gordon Reece's 'Mice', which is a pretty standard revenge fantasy novel. Not the worst example of the genre, but not the best either. You know from the get-go that a timid mother and daughter moving to an isolated cottage is not going to be the idyllic existence they believe it will be. I only wish the action had gotten started sooner and I hadn't had to wade through nearly a third of a book detailing how impossible it was for these two women to ever stand up for themselves. I really kinda hated them and, though I don't ever condone bullying, I started sympathizing with the bullies. Their complete lack of even half a backbone between the two of them made the turnabout, when it finally came, less believable for me.

Killers and Plumbers and Elves

Though Killer Elven Plumbers would have made a much more interesting book...maybe.

David Levien's '13 Million Dollar Pop' was a damned good thriller. Unfortunately, I'm getting pretty jaded and find more and more of what I read to be implausible and full of plot devices that are so out there that they take me out of the book. This is not the fault of the author, who is writing in a genre that is, by and large, full of implausible, if not impossible, plots. It's what makes them so very entertaining. And, truthfully, it wasn't the underlying plot--which dealt with politics and real estate speculation and a "racino"--that was the problem. It's the string of dead bodies that seem to pile up behind the protagonists of these novels that I have a problem with. In a spy novel, one can believe that some government agency or another will come by and clean up any mess that was left behind. But, when your protagonist is a civilian, the trail of carnage just seems like a prison sentence waiting to happen. I was able to finish Mr. Levien's book before I started questioning things, though, which is nice. I don't mind questioning events in retrospect; it means I was fully invested while the plot unfolded.

'Ravenwood' by Andrew Peters is a debut middle grade novel that I wanted to like much more than I did. The main character is a fourteen-year-old plumber who literally works in shit all day. He lives in a city (state? nation?) that exists in the trees and whose citizens never touch ground. Our hero, Ark, overhears a plot to overthrow the king and is the only one who can save his treetop home. The title implies there will be ravens. And things went along pretty well for a while. I could even forgive all of the "clever" flora-related wordplay. But, it wasn't too long before I realized that this was one of those "message" novels and was all about technology vs. nature (Spoiler alert: Nature wins). The characters were interesting and the final battle involved a poop cannon, which will definitely appeal to young boys (though it may also give them ideas), but the preachy love-the-trees-ness was just too much for this reader to take. Why does it have to be a choice between nature and technology? Can't there be a balance? If one were to judge by novels like this, then the answer is a firm and resounding "no".

'The Lady of the Storm' is the second novel in Kathryne Kennedy's Elven Lords series. It is a traditional historical romance, but set in an 18th-Century England that is under the rule of Elves. England has been divided into seven Realms, each home to Elves with an affinity for one of seven magics. Humans are little more than slaves, and half-breeds, especially those with any power, are despised and, in some cases, hunted down and killed. It's quite a lovely novel, with a well-developed relationship between the hero and heroine and a plot full of intrigue and adventure (and magic). But if you're looking for historical accuracy, or, you know, a lack of Elves, this is not the novel for you.