Month: October 2011

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand 10/23/11

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks> Virtual Nightstand

I realized that I spend a part of Sunday planning the books I’m going to review during the week. It’s sort of a plot, what goes where, and why centered around the publishing schedule. Everything new is released on either Monday or Tuesday. It’s kind of like the law of gravity, without the splat at the bottom.

I also looked around and discovered that there wasn’t a really good place to stick in some of the “why” about the stuff I read. Or some of the extra added attractions, like my mad scramble to read books 1 and 2 (and occasionally 3, 4 and 5) of a series in order for book 6 to make sense.   More on that later.

I get lot of my books from Netgalley, but not all of them. Authors are starting to ask me to review their books. That’s actually kind of a thrill. It doesn’t change my review, but it’s always nice to be asked. I also still have a lot of books in the house I haven’t read. Not to mention what my husband once described as “a metric buttload” of books that I have read. It’s all grist for the mill.

There is a “What’s on my nightstand” meme at 5 Minutes for Books that is really terrific, and I absolutely confess to having gotten my inspiration from them. But I need to do this once a week, and the original “What’s on my nightstand” only runs once a month. I need way more organizational help than that! Also, the instruction for the original asks that you take a picture of the stack, and I would usually be taking a picture of my iPad. My TBR pile is mostly, but not exclusively, electronic.

So what’s on my list this week? (Drumroll please)

The Iron Queen and The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa. I was able to snag a review copy of Iron Knight from Netgalley, but I had never read any of the series. I heard terrific things about it but never read any of them. Everyone knows what they are, YA urban fantasy or paranormal fantasy, depending on how you slice and dice your definitions. Urban fantasy/paranormal is right up my alley, YA or not, and I wanted to know what the fuss was about. Now I know. Iron King and Iron Daughter were fantastic, but I still have two more books to go, and the release date for Iron Knight is this Tuesday.

Tuesday’s Child by Dale Mayer is a romantic suspense title I received from the author. I promised I’d review it by this Friday, so it’s definitely on my list for this week.

I’ve got Darker Still by Leanna Renee Hieber from Netgalley for a November 1 release date. I requested this one because I liked the Victorian setting, and I enjoyed her story in Midwinter Fantasy. I bought her Strangely Beautiful series on my iPad, but haven’t had a chance to read them yet.

Most of the time, I read ebooks, but I have a paper copy of Cast in Secret by Michele Sagara on my nightstand. For real. Why? Because I have a review copy of Cast in Ruin from Netgalley. I always meant to read the series, to the point where I bought books 1-5 in print. Moved them, too. So when Cast in Ruin came up on Netgalley, I requested it. I figured it gave me a darn good reason to start reading the series. Now I wonder why I never read them before. They’re great! But each book is 400+ pages, and Ruin is book 7. I’ll get there. And I will review it, even if I have to buy my own copy.

Last but not least, A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie Klinger will be released on Tuesday. It’s a short story collection inspired by the Holmes canon. I know I’m going to buy it, and I know I’m going to read it as soon as it downloads to my iPad. I might as well just admit it now!

There will be other stuff, but these are the ones I’m sure about. More next Sunday!

 

Revealing Silver

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

Revealing Silver is the conclusion of the Silver Maiden Trilogy by Jamie Craig. With a very small amount of recap, it picks up exactly where Touching Silver left off. And thank goodness for that! The cliffhanger at the end of Touching Silver was a real doozy!

The oldest story in the world is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. As a society we’ve finally admitted that there are tons of wonderful stories in the variations on that theme–boy meets boy, girl meets girl, variations where three or more can play, whatever happens to float your personal boat. Science fiction and fantasy have added even more flavors, for example: boy or girl meets robot, or boy or girl meets vampire or shapeshifter, but the basic concept still stands. The love story is a classic, and the pattern is the same, they meet, they get separated, they get back together.

In Chasing Silver, Remy and Nate meet because Remy gets dragged back in time 70+ years. For them, it’s a miracle. They save each other.

Touching Silver was Nate’s partner Isaac’s story. When Nate and Remy find each other, Isaac is left out in the cold. He’s been the one keeping Nate from the abyss for the past five years, and suddenly he’s a fifth wheel. Until Detective Olivia Wright walks into his life. Olivia doesn’t need saving, but she would love to be his partner.

Two couples who have both fulfilled the first part of the love story equation, in the middle of Nate and Isaac’s investigation of a gang war between their two worst enemies; Cameron Parker, the man who set them up five years ago, and Gabriel de los Rios, the gang leader obsessed with the Silver Maiden coins, and the one who kidnapped the seven young girls in Olivia Wright’s Cold Case files.

At the end of Touching Silver, Nate, Remy, Isaac and Olivia interrupt a ritual Gabriel and his cousin are conducting, a ritual designed to bring back the original Silver Maiden. Gabriel and his cousin Marisol may be crazy, but six girls are still missing, and Remy knows that this ritual is building up the same kind of power that sent her back in time. She stops the ritual by throwing herself into the ritual circle, and finds herself jumping time again, this time back to Los Angeles in 2000. Her only hope is to contact Isaac and Nate in that time, while they were still both LAPD, and try to get help without screwing up her own personal timeline.

Nate is still back in 2010, and is devastated almost beyond repair. He tried to go through the circle before it closed, and Isaac stopped him. Their friendship, their brotherhood, is in tatters. Olivia is also linked to the Silver Maiden coins: Gabriel and Marisol both say that she a “Keeper”, a part of the coins in her own right.

When Gabriel and Marisol’s agendas diverge in their desires to use (or abuse) the Silver Maiden’s power, Gabriel kidnaps Olivia and uses her “Keeper” power to send her back in time to fix the things that he believes Marisol has broken, while he holds Nate hostage in 2010 for her “good” behavior. It’s a wild race to the finish.

Escape Rating B+: I was up until after 2 am trying to finish this. I was that caught up in it. The characters do make references to being caught up in a Doctor Who episode, and that’s pretty appropriate. There are a certain amount of “timey wimey” bits involved. But definitely in a fun way.

I will say that enjoying this story depends on having read the other two. This is the third book of a trilogy, and it assumes prior knowledge. It does wrap up all the loose ends very nicely. Justice is served, and the good guys get their well-deserved happy ending.

If I have piqued your interest in the Silver Maiden Trilogy, here are my reviews of Chasing Silver and Touching Silver so you can get the complete picture.

Touching Silver

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

Touching Silver is the second book in the Silver Maiden Trilogy by Jamie Craig. When I finished Chasing Silver, the first book in the trilogy, my review implied that I wanted three things from the next book; I wanted Isaac’s story, I wanted to know more about the Silver Maiden coins, and I wanted more story and less sexual mechanics. I’m pleased to say I pretty much got what I wanted. I love it when that happens.

Touching Silver is definitely Isaac’s story. Isaac McGuire was Nathan Pierce’s partner, back when Nate was a cop with the LAPD. Isaac is still Nate’s partner, except Nate isn’t a cop anymore. And Isaac isn’t willing to let anyone else close enough to become another partner, so Isaac has been working alone ever since. And that’s going on five years since.

But since Remy Capra dropped into Nate’s life, Nate has managed to move on from the betrayal and clusterfuck that took him out of the LAPD. It’s time for Isaac to move on, too.

Enter Detective Olivia Wright from the Cold Case Squad. One of her cold cases has not only warmed up, it’s intersected with Isaac’s long-standing hunt for Gabriel de los Rios.

A young woman, missing for five years, has turned up alive and traumatized. Gabriel de los Rios was one of her captors. Gabriel normally operates in gang territory, where witnesses are thin on the ground, and manpower to investigate is hard to come by. But kidnapping and holding a clean-cut, All-American girl who is still underage after five years in captivity? That charge will stick.

Isaac wants to take the formerly cold case and add it to his own caseload, but Olivia Wright won’t let it go. She wants in on the investigation, and won’t take “no” for any answer, no matter who she has to work with, including a former cop and his girlfriend who looks like a hooker.

But when Olivia finds one of the Silver Maiden coins at a crime scene, her reaction to it has her believing in things that are way, way outside of a cop’s normal jurisdiction. And her attraction to Isaac has her doing things that break all of the rules that she ever set for herself when she became a cop. But some rules are made to be broken, and what you believe in your heart is more important than what used to be cold, hard facts.

Escape Rating B: Touching Silver is a much better book than Chasing Silver. There is more story in it. Isaac and Olivia both have good reasons for not getting deeply involved, and the author shows them struggling with why they shouldn’t, but then groping toward the realization that they are better together than they are apart. Isaac needs to eat a major serving of crow to get there, and it tastes pretty awful going down, as it should!

Remy and Nate take a trip to South America to find the origins of the Silver Maiden. Finally, some background! It’s a little murky, but at the reasonable point. The coins are old, and the origins are somewhat lost in the sands of time. But Gabriel knows how to work them, or thinks he does, which means there is information to be found. If someone in the story knows it, then the reader should get to learn it. We do.

The one thing about trilogies that always bugs me is that there has to be a middle book. Middle books end in one of two ways. They either end on a downer, or a cliffhanger. This one does both. I’m starting the final book, Revealing Silver, right now!

Sleight of Hand

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Sleight of Hand, the first book in the Stolen Hearts series by Kate Kelly, brought a smile of recognition to my face from the very first page. Not just because Chance Spencer reminds me, just a little, of John Smythe, who drives Vicky Bliss to distraction in Elizabeth Peters’ series. But mostly because I’ve been to the Gardiner Musem. The real one. It’s the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the theft occurred in 1990, and the crime is still unsolved. The spaces where those 13 paintings used to hang are still empty. The image sticks with you, so updating that crime and using it as the basis for Simple Simon was simply brilliant.

In this story, Chance Spencer’s father was the curator of the Gardiner Museum when a similar crime took place. Chance’s response to his father’s subsequent suicide was to go on a one-man reverse crime spree, stealing the paintings back from the black market collectors who purchased the hot properties. As the infamous art thief “Simple Simon,” Chance robbed the robbers, then dropped the paintings off in FBI offices all over the US. He was notorious, but he never profited from his “talent”. The FBI was certain Chance was the guilty party, but they had no hard evidence. Chance was very careful–until he met Sarah O’Sullivan.

Patrick O’Sullivan was Chance’s business partner. Now Patrick is missing, along with several original pieces of art. Chance is certain that Patrick will contact his daughter, and Chance needs to find Patrick–before the FBI figures out a way to blame him for the crime. Chance knows the FBI would just love to get him for art theft, and as far as the Feds are concerned one art theft is just as good as another if Chance is close enough to it.

So Chance lures Sarah to Ashley Cove, Nova Scotia with the bait that her father has been near that small town. Chance starts out wanting to find his partner to get the FBI off his back before they find out all his secrets. Sarah wants to find her father to warn him that the FBI is after him. Neither of them count on Ashley Cove Art Museum hosting an Ansel Adams traveling art exhibition, or that it houses the collection of some local grand masters.  Add in a visit from Chance’s “favorite” FBI agent, Sarah’s stalker from New York, and even more art thieves, and you have a recipe for more trouble than Ashley Cove has ever seen.

As Chance and Sarah discover that they have only each other to count on, is it any wonder that they are unable to resist their attraction for one another? Even though Chance believes that he can’t possibly be worthy of a woman like Sarah, and in spite of Sarah being sure that Chance is just another rambling man like her father.

Escape Rating B: There were a lot of things about this story that I liked. Chance was looking for redemption, and was afraid to let anyone close until he found it. Sarah was looking for a family, because no one ever stayed with her. The one element I didn’t get was why her dad didn’t make a home with her, even if it meant traveling a lot, since at the end you find out it wasn’t money. There’s a piece of that story missing.

Adapting the story from the real Gardner Museum was cool. It added some deep background. I know that story has been used before, and will be again, but that’s okay. Sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction.

Chasing Silver

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

Chasing Silver by Jamie Craig is a time travel romance of the very hot and steamy variety. I really liked the gutsy heroine who, as she says, “doesn’t do damsel”, and the hero who hasn’t let himself feel anything in way too long. The device that started the whole time-travelling jaunt in the first place, well, let’s hope there’s more explanation for that in book two (or three) of the Silver Maiden trilogy.

The year is 2085. Remy Capra is running for her life from Kirsten Henryk, Senator Henryk’s daughter and paranoid enforcer. Kirsten does have something to enforce in Remy’s case. Remy is a gang member and small-time thief, and Remy has just stolen something important from the Senator’s house in DC: one of the coins known as a Silver Maiden. In what Remy was sure were the last seconds of her life, Remy clutched the coin as wished for safety.

The year is 2010. Nathan Pierce, ex-cop and bounty hunter, is in a warehouse in Culver City, chasing down a bounty jumper known as Tian. He almost has him, when a severely injured woman falls out of the sky, raining blood, glass and small explosions. His bounty escapes, and Nate is left with Remy Capra bleeding all over him, trying to pretend she isn’t so wounded she can barely stand.

Neither of them wants to go to the cops. Nate’s lost his bounty. Again. Remy has no ID in 2010. She won’t even be born for 50 more years. And she doesn’t know yet whether Kirsten is still after her or whether she has a chance to make a fresh start. Neither of them starts out willing to trust the other, even a little bit. Nate was set up and betrayed by the last woman he trusted. Remy is a child of the gangs in the DC she comes from. And would anyone believe her story? But their attraction to each other proves stronger than their doubts and fears.

When Kirsten does follow Remy, using another Silver Maiden coin as passage back in time, Nate, Remy and Nate’s partner Isaac must set aside all their misgivings about each other and their past, whenever that past might have been, in order to fight for a chance, any chance, at any future at all.

Escape Rating C: This story was either too long, or too short. On the one hand, we don’t get enough about why Kirsten was so gung-ho to wipe Remy out. There was definitely some old, bad blood between those too, but we don’t know enough. There was something personal on Kirsten’s part. Remy was trying to survive.

I empathized with both Remy and Nate as characters. They had both been to dark places, and they understood that about each other. They had a chance to make each other better, but neither was made out of sweetness and light. And they wouldn’t have worked together if they had been.

I’m very glad that one of the later books is Isaac’s story. He deserves a happy ending of his own. And I really want to know what his deal is.

The reason I said the books might be too short is that the legend of the Silver Maiden coins, what they do, why they do it, how they work, who knows about them, is still unclear at the end of the book. Remy and Kirsten both made them work. The coin reacts to Nate. Gabriel, another baddie, knows about them. But the readers need more details!

On the other hand, the reason the books might be too long is that there are probably too many detailed sex scenes. I had to think about why I thought this. Romance is interesting, because it’s a story. How did they meet? How long did they resist the attraction? What made them give in? Unresolved sexual tension is interesting because how and why they resist is a story. The first time a couple kisses or has sex or makes love in a romance is note-worthy. Possibly even the second time, since it should be different. In a story, the first time there are emotions involved and not just body parts is definitely note-worthy. Break-up and make-up sex, but because of the emotions, not the “tab a goes into slot b”, no matter how you dress it up, or undress it.

The only romance writer who has been able to successfully write an unlimited number of sex scenes involving the same two partners is J.D. Robb. And only because she talks more about how Dallas and Roarke feel than about what they do.

Steam & Sorcery

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

When I went looking for something to read purely for fun, I indulged myself by picking up Cindy Spencer Pape’s Steam & Sorcery. My journey through the steampunk world of Pape’s Gaslight Chronicles was utterly fantastic. And eminently enjoyable!

Sir Merrick Hadrian is a Knight of the Order of the Round Table. Except in this alternate version of the Victorian Era, the descendants of King Arthur and his knights hunt monsters using not just swords, and now pistols, but also arcane talents. Merlin’s descendants serve the order as well as Gawain’s and Lancelot’s.

One night, Sir Merrick is in the London stews facing more vampyres than he counted on and finds that his only available allies are a group of street urchins–led by a teenage boy with all the talents of a budding Knight. After the battle, he brings all five children into his bachelor household only to discover that all of the children are uniquely talented: not just the unclaimed Knight, but also a mechanical genius, a highly powered medium, one who can see the future, and one who is simply a genius.

Sir Merrick and his Aunt Dorothy, who shares his household, need a governess for the children. Enter Miss Caroline Bristol. Caroline is intelligent, pretty, opinionated and out of a job without a reference. Again. After having vigorously defended herself from yet another employer’s rather importunate advances and being turned out.

Dorothy is certain that Caroline is the perfect governess for the unruly brood. Caroline is less than convinced. She has a secret of her own. Anything mechanical breaks when she touches it, including her new charge Wink’s fantastic mechanical inventions. Caroline’s other secret–she finds her new employer, Sir Merrick Hadrian, positively irresistible.

Meanwhile, there are vampyres infiltrating London high society. They have banded together in order to get their claws on a formula that will finally allow them to blend in with mortals, at least at night. And they seem to have a spy somewhere in the Knights organization!

As Merrick and Caroline try and fail to resist their increasing attraction to one another, Merrick must also figure out who among the Knights has been suborned to the vampyre cause, all while adjusting to the utter disruption of his formerly placid bachelor life. The game is afoot!

Escape Rating A: I stayed up until after 1 am reading this, finished, and then I was sorry it was over. I looked at the time, decided “oh, what the heck” and read Photographs & Phantoms before I went to sleep. I hope the author returns to this world. I’d like to see Tommy’s story and Wink’s. There were hints that those might be interesting!

Meanwhile, Steam & Sorcery was an absolute hoot! I loved Merrick’s adjustment from having a bachelor household to having a family. His failure to resist was portrayed with a lot of gentle humor. You know he’s going to succumb, but it’s still fun to watch. The tutor either had a bit too much of a stick up his arse or he had a bit too much of a conversion by the end, I’m not quite sure which.

The romance between Merrick and Caroline was terrific. Neither wants to get involved, but they are the right people for each other, and it’s very clear in the story. It’s easy to root for them to get their happy ending.

Lord of the Wolfyn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

Lord of the Wolfyn by Jessica Andersen is an interesting twist on the old Red Riding Hood story. It is also the third book in the Royal House of Shadows series. The fourth and final book, Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh, will be out in November.

Dayn was the second prince of Elden.  The Crown Prince Nicolai’s story was told in Lord of the Vampires (reviewed here). When the Blood Sorcerer attacked, Dayn was outside the castle with a hunting party. Not just because hunting dangerous beasts who roamed near the castle was part of his duties, but because he was angry with the King and Queen, his parents, for telling him he had to marry a princess instead of the continuing to dally with whomever he pleased. Their argument was the last time they ever spoke before their deaths at the hands of the Blood Sorcerer.

Their final spell saved his life, as it did the lives of his siblings. His father’s spell for revenge, and his mother’s spell for him to survive. Their spell created a vortex and bound his life with the wolfyn he was chasing at the time of their deaths. It transported him to the realm of the wolfyn and gave him the power to transform into one of the powerful werebeasts. But Dayn was also vampire, like his brother and father, and the wolfyn realms hated and feared with vampires. Dayn spent the next 20 years pretending to have “vortex sickness,” hiding all his gifts from the wolfyn he lived among by pretending to be only a human traveler with a small amount of magic.

Dreams and visions told him that he would be visited by a guide when the vortex began opening again. He waited 20 years for that guide, never expecting a woman from Earth with no belief in magic or vortex travel would be the one supposed to guide him back to his kingdom, or back to his true self.

Reda Weston has been haunted by the tale of Red Riding Hood since she was a little girl. Not the Disney version, but a very special version, from a “one-of-a-kind” illustrated edition of the story that her mother used to read to her. In Rutakoppchen, the wolf seduces Red first, then he enslaves her, then he plays with her until he gets bored, and then, and only then, does he finally eat her all up. Her mother told her this as a bedtime story?

But Reda’s father made her sell the book after her mother’s death, and now Reda is compelled to get it back. She’s been dreaming about the Woodsman, and those dreams are the only part of her life that feels real anymore. Reda used to be a cop. But one night she froze when her partner got caught up in a convenience store robbery that went bad, and Reba isn’t a cop anymore.

Finding Rutakoppchen again does more than bring back childhood memories. It opens a door for Reba. It opens a vortex–straight through to Dayn. And the wolfyn.

At first Reba thinks she’s having a really vivid dream. She’s dreamed of Dayn before, and those dreams have always been really good. And really hot. But never in her dreams has the Woodsman turned out to be a vampire. Nor have predatory trees tried to make the ground swallow her alive.

This is Reba’s journey as much, or more, than it is Dayn’s. She needs to find her cop’s courage again so that she can be the guide that he needs in order to help re-take his kingdom. And Dayn needs to find his true self and true purpose in order to be the mate that Reba deserves.

Escape Rating C+: I liked the twist on Red Riding Hood. Dayn turns out to be both the Woodsman and the Wolf. Literally and not just figuratively. Reba comes a long way in picking herself up and taking charge of her own fate. Coming through the vortex lets her grab the missing pieces of herself. It’s clear she’s been letting other people tell her who she’s supposed to be for way too long, and it’s great to see her realize that.

While I enjoyed the parts with Dayn and Reba, even though I wished that Dayn wouldn’t have kept so many secrets from so many people for so damn long, the issue with series like Royal House of Shadows is that chunks of the same story have to be told each time, just from different points of view. The first time it’s new, the second time it’s not so bad (sister Breena’s tale was Lord of Rage—see review here), but by the third time around, it’s too much. I’m more than ready for the conclusion. It’s time for that dark sorcerer to DIE!

 

Dearly, Departed

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel is an excellent read. It’s also absolutely the best YA post-holocaust steampunk zombie romance I’ve ever read. Admittedly, it’s also the only YA post-holocaust steampunk zombie romance I’ve ever read.

Nora Dearly is the daughter of the late Dr. Victor Dearly. As in Dr. Victor Dearly, the recently departed. The title of the book is a pun. Oh is it ever.

Miss Dearly’s world is that of the Neo-Victorians. You see, we screwed up. Climate change happened, and it sucked. The survivors ended up in our equatorial regions, and they were the hardiest of the survivors. They deliberately looked back in history for an era of peace, stability and civilization. What did they choose? The Victorian Era! Even as they recovered our technology, and even surpassed it, their society became further entrenched in the cultural and societal norms of the Victorian Age.  So by Miss Dearly’s time, we have airships, steampower, electric power, digital diaries, parasols, crinoline, and corsetry. In other words, we have steampunk.

The Neo-Victorians are at war with the Punks. The two sides have somewhat different views of how technology should and should not be used. And everybody wants everyone else’s territory. War is like that. But there’s a much bigger, badder threat from the outside, and both the NVs and the Punks are using the war against each other as a smokescreen to cover up who they are really fighting. They’re really fighting–zombies.

There’s a mutated disease out there in the wilds. It’s called “The Laz”. That’s a bit of appropriately gallows humor, as Lazarus was a man raised from the dead. Well, the Laz does that too, sort of. Victims of the Laz may or may not be as functional as the biblical Lazarus when they come back.

Nora’s father, Dr. Victor Dearly, figured out a way to keep victims of the Laz mentally functional and as physically capable as possible for as long as possible. For that, he became Director of Military Health of the Department of Military Health. It’s usually referred to as DoMH, pronounced “Doom”.

With the aid of Dr. Dearly’s research, there are now zombie troops fighting zombie incursions. In secret, of course. Nora knows none of this. All she knows is that her father is the only one who treats her like an intelligent human being, instead of a decoration, which is what girls are supposed to be. Then he dies and leaves her an orphan in the care of a cold-hearted Aunt.

Then the zombies come to New London. Opposing forces converging on Nora Dearly. One set to protect her, one to capture her. Nora finds herself whisked away from her home to the base for the NV Zombie unit in the care of Captain Bram Griswold, and her entire universe falls apart and reassembles itself, much like the human body does when it is attacked by the Laz disease.

It should be the end of the world as Nora knows it. A proper Neo-Victorian young lady should fall apart. But Nora is done falling apart. The new Nora kicks aside convention and kicks some serious ass. I like her a lot.

Escape Rating A: This turned out to be a great book. There was a tremendous amount going on, but all the elements were needed to make it work. I couldn’t figure out how anyone could make a zombie the hero/love interest, but it honestly does work in this book. On the other hand, if this were a contemporary book, and Nora actually wanted to have sex, I’m not sure how that would be managed. But since it is totally realistic for her not to even think of going there, it works. Nora wants someone to treat her like a real person and not a decorative object. Bram completely does that. This is about emotion, not body parts.

I’m looking forward to the next book, Dearly Beloved. I can’t wait to see where the story goes from here. I hope there’s a cure. I want Bram and Nora to have a happy ever after. That’s not realistic, but I want it for them just the same. Call me an optimist. Or call me a romantic.

Guest Review: The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott

Posted on by Galen Charlton | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott by David M. Wilson, while based on the recent rediscovery of photographs taken during Robert Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition of 1910-1913, is really a meditation on reputation and remembrance.

“I am just going outside and may be some time”.  These words, uttered by expedition member Lawrence Oates before he sacrificed himself to save his companions on the trek back from the pole, have always chilled me.  We know of this only because Scott wrote about the incident in his diary.  Of course, Oates’ sacrifice came to naught; Scott and his companions died just eleven miles short of the depot that could have saved their lives.  From one point of view, this is all of piece: Scott failed to reach the pole before Amundsen; unlike Shackleton, he failed to keep his companions alive; and failed to keep himself alive.  Racing to the South Pole may be the ultimate boy’s own adventure, but Scott bungled it.

Or did he?  For that matter, what was he racing towards?  Wilson argues that there was no race, at least not one that Scott cared about.  The polar expeditions of the 19th and early 20th centuries were undertaken for a variety of motives, with a tension between exploration qua adventure and exploration for scientific purposes.  Scott conceived of his expedition as a scientific one; while it may have been necessary for fundraising and publicity to promote a goal of reaching the pole first and planting the King’s flag on it, Scott was more interested in the geographic and scientific discoveries that the trip could reveal.

To that end, Scott hired Herbert Ponting as expedition photographer and gave him a free hand to equip the expedition with all of the photographic equipment necessary for scientific purposes.  Ponting was perhaps one of Scott’s best hires; not only did he innovate techniques for using very awkward photographic equipment under harsh conditions to produce gorgeous results, he trained Scott and other expedition members to be passable polar photographers as well.  However, as Ponting was not up to the rigors of the run to the Pole, in 1912 he returned home to catalog the photographs and await Scott’s return to mount an exhibition.

By the time Ponting reached England, Scott was already dead.  Ponting’s own plans came to naught.  The absence of Scott, wrangling over the rights to the photographs, and the advent of World War I served to bury Ponting’s photographs as well as the ones taken by Scott himself.  Besides, why would the martyr’s photographs be of more interest than the martyr himself?  By the latter part of the 20th century, Scott’s reputation had fallen under attack.  Why would a bungler’s pics be of any interest?  Moreover, where was a competent archivist to be found?  Nowhere.

Reality Rating B+:  It, perhaps, was not until now, with recent efforts to rehabilitate or at least re-vision Scott’s reputation that there was fertile ground for the rediscovery of these photographs.  Wilson tells a tale that is bittersweet on many levels and places Scott and his final expedition in the center of some important dichotomies.  The book is also visually stunning.

Caveat: My review copy of this book was a PDF from NetGalley.  As it turned out, this is not a book that works well on current ebook readers.  Attempting to read it on my iPad was a rather frustrating experience, and until Apple comes out with the iCoffeeTable or unless you have a very large monitor, if you buy this book … get it in print.

The Edinburgh Dead

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

The Edinburgh Dead, by Brian Ruckley, is an extremely creepy, extremely gritty book mixing very black magic, Frankenstein’s monster, true crime body snatchers and the dark beginnings of Edinburgh’s police force. The Frankenstein element made this less of a historic urban fantasy and closer to horror than I expected.

The police sergeant investigating the case is Adam Quire, a member of the relatively new Edinburgh Police Department. Quire was a soldier under Wellington in the late Napoleonic Wars, and soldiering and policing are the only two things he’s ever been much good at, even if as a policeman he only seems to follow orders when it suits him.

In 1828, Quire is called to to a corpse in the Old Town section of Edinburgh. The corpse has been savaged by dogs, to the point that Quire hasn’t seen anyone this badly damaged outside of a battlefield. Napoleon having been finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815, Quire had hoped never to see a body this completely destroyed ever again.

The savagely deceased is eventually identified as Edward Carlyle, formerly in the employ of one John Ruthven. And it is in Quire’s questioning of Ruthven that the story really begins. Or perhaps descends into the pit.

Ruthven appears to be a wealthy man who can wreck Quire’s career with a few well-placed social calls. Ruthven makes his threats, and carries them out. But Quire knows from the beginning that Ruthven is lying about something, and Quire can’t let it go, even when his life is threatened. Quire knows that too much about the case is not what it appears to be.

And Quire is absolutely right. Ruthven’s whole life is a sham. He has been mixing black sorcery with an attempt at the same types of scientific experiments that Dr. Frankenstein performed in Mary Shelley’s literary masterpiece Frankenstein (published in 1818). Ruthven has more than succeeded–something dark and malevolent has come to inhabit his “monster”–it is not just alive, it is self-aware and very, very self-willed.

But Ruthven’s experiments must continue. He must do even better. And into this fictional horror there is added real horror. Ruthven needed more bodies for his experiments, so he contracted with William Burke and William Hare, real serial killers who were operating in Edinburgh in the 1820’s. Burke and Hare were providing fresh corpses to Dr. Robert Knox, an anatomy lecturer at the Edinburgh Medical College by murdering their victims and presenting Dr. Knox with fresh subjects for his lectures. Burke, Hare and Knox were real, and were caught in 1828. Presumably the ending was not quite as it occurs in Edinburgh Dead, although the case is gruesome enough.

Escape Rating C: There were a tremendous number of story elements. The early history of Edinburgh’s police department, the Burke and Hare serial murders, the medical education establishment in Edinburgh in the early 1800’s, the black sorcery, the Frankenstein’s monster. Juggling all of those elements, along with the character development required to maintain interest in Quire himself, took a lot of doing. It made following the plot more than a bit tangled at times.

Also, I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as heavy on the horror elements as it was. That’s a case of one’s mileage may vary.