Category: C Reviews

Review: Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
three moments of an explosion by china mievilleFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: science fiction short stories
Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Date Released: August 4, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse’s bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?

Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection—many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world—and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves—Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of our most original voices.

My Review:

China Miéville seems to be one of those authors where people who like his writing really, really like it, and people who don’t just don’t. There doesn’t seem to be much of a middle.

After finishing his collection of short stories, Three Moments of an Explosion, I find myself firmly in the latter camp. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried something by him, and my second impression matches the first – “interesting, but not for me.”

I like my stories with a clear beginning, middle and end. However, a lot of the stories in this collection seemed to simply stop, rather than satisfyingly conclude. That’s my interpretation, and your mileage, of course, may vary.

There were also quite a few stories in the collection that felt like horror, some of the Lovecraftian school, and some just plain horror. I very seldom like horror stories, and this was no exception. Creepiness for creepiness’ sake just, well, creeps me out. But also leaves me cold. Sometimes shaking with fear, but mostly cold as to engagement. I don’t warm up to the story.

My favorite story in the collection is the fourth story in. The Dowager of Bees is a story about the inherent magic in cards, card play and card games. It’s part of that satisfaction one feels when the one card in the entire deck comes up, and you win against all odds. It also taps into the wonder of watching someone do complex card tricks excellently. We’ve all handled those pasteboards, how can someone make them dance? But the story involves secret magic, that sometimes, when one is an especially adept player, very special cards appear in the game, and those special cards invoke very special rules that are only available to you while the secret card is in play. It’s also a story about competition, and the desire to win, and oddly enough, love.

One of the horror stories is quietly terrifying in a way that stuck with me. To say I liked it is the wrong phraseology. To say that I’m haunted by it is probably a better match. Säcken is extremely creepy, and creeps along behind you after you finish. A young woman flees something completely “other” that utterly terrifies her, discovers that she can’t flee, and tries to placate it instead. While we all know that was a mistake, it is easy to feel her relief and ultimate terror as she discovers that she has only made things much, much worse. If you think Grimm’s Fairy Tales aren’t nearly Grimm enough, this one’s for you.

There’s a story that is just a bit creepy, but in the thriller type of creepy. It’s also a bit fun and playful. In Dreaded Outcome, we find out just how far some therapists are willing to go in order to help their patients move beyond whatever, or whoever is causing their emotional traumas. If you’ve ever been in therapy, much of the setup will feel familiar. You may also wish that the solutions to your issues could be found in the way that the narrator does.

Escape Rating C+: The few stories I liked, I really liked. The Dowager of Bees is a story that I could see recommending to lots of people looking for a story that might fit into Lev Grossman’s Magicians series or even Harry Potter. The idea that there is magic in the everyday world, but that we don’t run across it except in certain special circumstances.

A lot of SF tropes and themes get played with in this collection. There are several stories that skewer the vicious smallness of academic politics. The academic side is very vicious indeed, but what they are fighting over generally starts out small in these stories, until it becomes bigger and creepier than the reader originally thought.

But in general, there is a lot of very creepy weird in this collection. And it’s just not my cuppa. If it is yours, enjoy.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Dissident by Cecilia London

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
dissident by cecilia london alternate coverFormat read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook
Genre: contemporary romance, political thriller
Series: Bellator Saga #1
Length: 274 pages
Publisher: Principatum Publishing
Date Released: March 17, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

She once was important. Now she’s considered dangerous.

In a new America where almost no one can be trusted, Caroline lies unconscious in a government hospital as others decide her fate. She is a political dissident, wanted for questioning by a brutal regime that has come to power in a shockingly easy way. As she recovers from her injuries, all she has are her memories. And once she wakes up, they may not matter anymore.

Dissident is part contemporary romance and part political thriller, with elements of romantic suspense and speculative fiction. Told mostly in flashback, it details the budding romantic relationship between our heroine Caroline and Jack, the silver fox playboy who tries to win her heart.

My Review:

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Actually, the state of Pennsylvania, and apparently the rest of the U.S. Not that we find out nearly enough about what’s gone wrong in the first book of the Bellator Saga.

Most of this story is told in flashback. Actually, so much of it is flashback that it feels like the few bits that are in the main character’s “present” feel like flash forwards. This feels like the very beginning of how things got the way they are, but it is so far back that there are no hints of the awful future that will come to pass.

It’s not that the future in Caroline’s world isn’t awful – because the tiny bits of it we see definitely are. It’s that we see nothing of even the very beginning of the road to hell – we just find ourselves with Caroline in the handbasket.

A handbasket which is still dark and not well lighted with description. All we see of it are Caroline and her husband attempting to escape to Canada, a doctor murdered, and Texas and California seceding from a very shaky locked-down Union.

Caroline is in a medical coma in a hospital, after a sadistic beating by the soldiers of this new republic, where the former U.S. Representative has been declared a dissident, for reasons that the readers still do not know by the end of the book.

What we see in the past is Caroline’s rocky road to romance with her second husband, also a U.S. Representative. It is a heart-warming and occasionally heart-rending romance between two adults who both have some serious damage.

Caroline is a relatively young widow. Her first husband died in an automobile accident, skidding on black ice and totaling the car and himself. (After the end of the story in the present, one can’t help but wonder if it was really an accident, but without enough information yet to determine why it might not have been.)

Jack is a rich playboy who seems to have bought himself a House seat. While he does a good job as a freshman congressperson, he has spent his life with his eye on the next chance. He sees himself as completely shallow, but seems to have fallen in love, for reals, with the likable and anything but shallow Caroline.

Also she’s a Democrat and he’s a Republican, but they both have a history of reaching across the aisle. That by the end of the book he wants to lead her down an aisle is a bit more reaching than either of them expected.

First they will have to get past his betrayal of their trust. The entire length of their relationship, he’s been planning to run for Governor of Pennsylvania, and never bothered to tell her. When the flashbacks end, their relationship is on extremely shaky ground.

When the story ends in her present, she is waking up from her coma to the memory of exactly how severely she was beaten. But we, the readers, still don’t know why.

Escape Rating C+: While I enjoyed this while I was reading it, there wasn’t anything that compelled me to keep going. I’m not sure why that is, but it is.

The one thing that drove me bananas is that there is nothing in Caroline’s flashbacks, and no details in the present, to let me know how the hell things got so f’ed up. While the details may be premature in the way that the author is telling the story, I need to have clues about how things got the way they are, and I felt completely dissatisfied at the end that there wasn’t anything to help me out.

I have a nasty feeling that this is going to be like Babylon 5, where a repressive government takes control of Earth through a coup that appears legitimate, then insidiously uses quasi-legal means to ramp up fear, create secret organizations that spy on citizens in the guise of safety and peace, and then outright repress all resistance until rebellion breaks out and planets and peoples start seceding.

But I’m guessing because I don’t know. I didn’t find any hints and that frustrates me no end. Most of the time, I felt like I was reading a contemporary romance. A pretty decent contemporary romance at that.

However, I needed to see where the shadows come in to accept this book as anything more.  And I just didn’t find the signs and portents I needed for that.

I also recognize that what I am looking for is intended to appear in later volumes. This is a serial novel rather than a series, and Dissident is only part one. My frustrations with it make me realize that I just don’t care for the serial novel concept. I need my stories to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, even if, as with books in a series, the end is a pause rather than a complete finish. There is still some intentional closure in each book in a series, and I like my stories that way.

As always, YMMV.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Bite Me Your Grace by Brooklyn Ann

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
bite me your grace by brooklyn annFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: historical paranormal romance
Series: Scandals with Bite #1
Length: 354 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Date Released: April 2, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

England’s “vampire craze” causes much vexation for the Lord Vampire of London, Ian Ashton. To save his reputation, Ian enlists aspiring authoress Angelica Winthrop without realizing she has hidden plans of her own.

Angelica Winthrop’s life goal is to ruin her reputation, avoid marriage, and become a gothic authoress like her idol, Mary Shelley. To find inspiration for her new story, she breaks into the home of Ian Ashton, Duke of Burnrath, not knowing she will be coming up against the Lord Vampire of London. Romance sparks and reputations are at stake. But who knows the real difference between fact and fiction?

My Review:

I thought that this story was a lot of fun, but at the same time it felt as if it was as much of a send up or spoof of Regency romances as it was a Regency romance with a paranormal twist.

Still, it’s a genuinely light-hearted and fun spoof, if you want to take it that way. And there is a happily ever after that is going to mean a lot more of that “ever after” than is usual.

However, the tension in the story came more from a series of misunderstandammits than I would have preferred. On that other hand, so many of those misunderstandings are the result of a general lack of knowledge and information on the heroine’s part about the nature and preferences of vampires, as well as her more typical lack of knowledge of men and the way the world works.

Young misses of the upper classes were supposed to be innocent of worldly knowledge. Vampire knowledge is kept secret, so of course she hasn’t much clue on that score.

It was terrific to see the interweaving of the real rise in supernatural fiction with Angelica’s introduction into the real life of vampires. This story takes place at the time when Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’s The Vampyre (the forerunner of Bram Stoker’s Dracula) were all the rage.

And causing London’s Vampire Lord to gnash his fangs in his search for Polidori, his inspiration, and which one of the London vampires betrayed their kind and exposed them to ridicule and possible discovery.

Because London’s Vampire Lord is also Ian Ashton, the Duke of Burnrath. He has a place in ton society that he doesn’t exercise much but does cause a lot of jealousy and resentment in certain quarters. Also, his eccentric life (no one ever sees him at night) makes him an easy target for anyone who wants to suggest he is a vampire. Which, of course, he is.

In this case we have both an unconventional hero and an unconventional heroine. Ian is a vampire who regularly leaves the country, and returns 50 years later as his own properly documented heir. Being the Vampire Lord of London is sometimes frustrating, but he’s also getting tired and bored. And Polidori’s story has him seething.

Angelica is a headstrong young society miss who does not want to marry and turn into a society drone. She wants to become an author like Mary Shelley or Jane Austen. Of course, she has no idea what she will be getting herself into. Her plan is to “ruin herself” with her behavior so that her parents (especially her overbearing mother), will stop pushing her to get married.

Because Angelica is fascinated with gothic horror stories, she decides to check out Ian’s London house, which is conveniently across the street from her own. She lets herself in during the day and starts hunting for a ghost. She expects to find lots of inspiration in Ian’s dusty estate.

Instead, Ian finds her. According to the rules of the day, simply being alone in his house with him without a chaperone is enough to ruin her. What she doesn’t expect is that Ian will decide that marrying a human woman will throw off the scent of the very real vampire hunters who are after him.

That Angelica had no thought that her parents would fall all over themselves to “leg-shackle” her to the man who ruined her, whoever he might be, is just one of the ways that Angelica’s naivete is so clearly (and frequently) displayed.

Verbally sparring with Angelica, who is well if unconventionally educated, makes Ian feel alive in more ways than just sexually. She is different in ways that make her a challenge as well as a delightful surprise.

But they don’t talk to each other about what is really going on. Not just that Ian is a vampire, but what that will mean. Or even that he truly enjoys her unconventionality, especially including her extreme forthrightness.

That lack of communication nearly wrecks their fledgling marriage. Even more important, it very nearly gets both of them killed.

Escape Rating C: I liked Ian and Angelica, and the premise of the story was good, but there were too many things that drove me bananas.

As much external tension as exists in this story between Polidori’s elusiveness, the vampire hunter, and the continuing speculation on whether or not Ian is a vampire, the author concentrated too much on Angelica’s and Ian’s communication problems, which were legion. Everything that goes wrong in their story comes down to eavesdropping, misunderstandings and a complete unwillingness to talk to each other about anything serious. While this may have been the actual pattern at this point in history, that the entire difficulty in the relationship comes down a giant misunderstandammit almost made me stop in the middle.

Both Angelica’s mother and her grandfather felt like cardboard cutouts instead of real characters. It’s not just that Angelica sees her mother as being stupid, but that she consistently acts that way. Her mother’s desire to get Angelica married off is logical. That she never sees her very unconventional daughter as the person she really is grated on this reader’s nerves. While our time period may have different goals at least some of the time, what her mother wanted was the right thing for that era. That she never figured out that she used the wrong arguments and persuasions every single time made me cringe.

Angelica’s rich grandfather was just a nasty and overbearing bully. And creepy.

With all of the family drama going on, the introduction of a real bloodthirsty vampire hunter into this mix felt over-the-top. That one of Ian’s vampires was able to defy him and deceive him over Polidori also didn’t fit with the descriptions of how much vampires were obedient and beholden to their local lord. That the female vampire in question was as naive as Angelica, if not more so, made no sense.

This story had a lot of interesting ideas that didn’t quite gel for me. Your mileage may vary.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: In Flames by Richard Hilary Weber + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> book reviews> C Reviews> Giveaways
in flames by richard hilary weberFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: political thriller
Length: 188 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: February 3, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

San Iñigo is a jewel of the Caribbean, a playground paradise for the foreign elite, a hell for unfortunate locals. For recent Princeton grad Dan Shedrick, San Iñigo promises the fulfillment of too many desires.

Dan hires on at a powerful American firm as a junior architect, but still finds time for tennis, booze, a reckless affair with the sexy wife of a resort owner—even a bit of reconnaissance for the U.S. cultural attaché. But soon he discovers that nothing on San Iñigo is without consequence. When a much-loved local radio personality is found on a beach with his head blown off, Dan’s lover becomes a suspect. And not long after his foray into espionage, he’s dragged away on a brutal journey into the heart of darkness.

Buffeted by aggression, depraved ritual, and personal betrayal, Dan discovers fierce truths about San Iñigo . . . and himself. In the island’s forbidding mountain jungle, his life goes up in flames—a deadly inferno that will forever change him, if he survives at all.

My Review:

I finished this last night, and I’m still not quite sure what it is intended to be. It takes stabs (sometimes literally) at a lot of different genres and ideas, but never quite settles on one or the other (or the other).

At first we have a young man on a tropical island. While it sounds like paradise, it obviously is not. Dan Shedrick is a recently minted architect with a degree from Princeton, and no job prospects. It’s not him, it’s the Great Recession. Jobs for new graduates, along with everyone else, took a multi-year nosedive.

This may just be my own background.showing, but “Shedrick” reads way too much like “Shmendrik”, which is Yiddish for “stupid person”. The resonance was strong because Dan Shedrick comes off as a “shmendrik”. He is stupid, or at least clueless throughout much of the book. In The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten, a shmendrik is defined as an apprentice shlemiel, meaning loser or fool. Dan is certainly both of those, too.

I would say I just digressed, but I’m not sure I did. Dan embodies both of those dubious qualities through the entire story. It was a concept that I could not get out of my head.

Dan gets a job, but not in the U.S. He becomes a contractor for the U.S. based Xy Corp., designing oil rigs and other architectural/engineering constructs, on the tropical island San Iñigo. The place is described as lawless and dangerous outside of the protected zones, and Dan sees the gun emplacements surrounding the airport as solid proof. The U.S. is propping up a corrupt government in order to get access to the offshore oil and other natural resources, and Xy Corp. is their chief contractor. Or chief extractor.

Of course there are rebels who want their island and their country back. I say “of course” because that is the common narrative for these type of stories, and it is also the narrative in the news about many such places.

Dan gets sucked in to the strange otherness of the ex-pat community on San Iñigo. He is seduced by the lifestyle of clinging to the protected zones, his own former countrymen, and living a life of relative luxury at the golf and tennis club while he drinks his nights away. He is also seduced by the young wife of the club owner, totally oblivious to the fact that Elaine seduces every man in the club for ends that are only vaguely realized or understood.

Even when Dan is recruited by the local U.S. CIA Station Chief to operate a listening post for the U.S. Government and its interests in San Inigo, Dan remains oblivious to the sheer number of people who are using and manipulating both him and the San Inigo officials.

Until Elaine literally throws him to the wolves and he finds himself kidnapped by the local rebels by mistake. He sinks into his own “heart of darkness” as he battles the jungle with his captors, and then battles against them and that same jungle in order to escape.

Once he is out, he discovers that he is not really free, and that he never has been. Just as he was used by everyone on all sides prior to his kidnapping, he emerges only to realize that everyone has plans to use him and his story for their own ends once he has escaped.

And there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do to stop them.

Escape Rating C-: For this reader, the problem was that the story started out with multiple possible plot lines, and ended up absolutely nowhere. Dan Shedrick was a shmendrik.

Because the story is told entirely from Dan’s point-of-view, we only know what he knows and only see what he sees. And Dan never does seem to know very much. Even at the end, he only thinks he’s figured out what is going on in tropical San Iñigo (and with Elaine). It doesn’t ever feel as if he either finds or discovers anything like the whole truth. Which means that we don’t either.

There are lots of secrets hinted at but none are ever revealed. Elaine might have been sleeping her way through the San Iñigo government. The U.S. might (is probably) propping up a corrupt dictatorship through proxies and military contractors. Dan is almost certainly being used by the U.S. propaganda machine, but he (and we) never get to the bottom of why.

This might be more tolerable if Dan were a more interesting or even sympathetic character.I never cared about him, so I didn’t care what happened to him. In Flames is not quite a mystery, but did not have the breakneck pace of a thriller. It did leave me with a lot of questions about San Iñigo, and especially about who was using who.

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Death of a Liar by M.C. Beaton

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
death of a liar by mc beatonFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genre: mystery
Series: Hamish Macbeth #31
Length: 272 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Date Released: February 3, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home and Hamish must sort through all of her lies to solve the crime.

My Review:

The Hamish Macbeth series is still fun in small doses, but this one could have doubled as an episode of House, because everybody lies.

The story begins with a woman who claims to have been brutally attacked and raped, but there’s no evidence. She also doesn’t want Hamish to call in the local doctor, and we soon find out why – the woman not only has not been raped, she’s a virgin. There’s no evidence of any crime whatsoever, but there is a lot of evidence that the lady is a pathological liar. Because the call is in a relatively remote village, Hamish is not pleased by this waste of police time, especially when it is his.

While the desire is normally to believe the victim, in this case it is simply not possible. The doctor provides Hamish with a long list of lies that the supposed victim has told. She isn’t making stuff up to protect herself, she simply can’t stop herself from lying. She has mythomania.

So when she calls Hamish again to report a murder, he understandably doesn’t believe her. In this case, we have a woman who cried wolf. And just like the story of the boy who cried wolf, this woman is telling the truth, just this once. And she dies for it.

death of yesterday by mc beatonAs usual, nothing about this crime is exactly as it appears. Hamish starts out investigating a lonely death and finds himself poking into a religious cult that is fronting for both a long con and a drug running gang. He eventually gets to the right perpetrators, and most importantly finds the money, but it takes more than the usual number of red herrings, and proceeds nicely through the Macbeth series standard formula (see Wednesday’s review of Death of Yesterday for a description of that formula.)

While the journey in this series is always fun, the humor and in jokes are more fun if you’ve read some previous books in the series. But not too many.

death of a policeman by mc beatonEscape Rating C+: I read three of the Hamish Macbeth books in a row, after not having read one for several years. In addition to Death of Yesterday (see review) I also read Death of a Policeman (I got it from the library and did not review it).

I certainly enjoyed reading this series again. Hamish is an interesting character, and the townspeople of Lochdubh are by turns eccentric and charming, sometimes both at the same time.

Hamish is unusual in that he is a relatively young man who has come back to an area where the young people are mostly leaving. A fact that does not help his love life, which he constantly bemoans. He would like to settle down and get married, but his options in Lochdubh are simply limited.

At the same time, he is an unambitious man in an ambitious world. He doesn’t want a promotion, because any rank above Sergeant would take him out of Lochdubh and into the city of Strathsbane, which is a cesspit in general and Hamish just doesn’t want to live in a city. He likes his small cottage with his dog and his cat and the various livestock he keeps. He loves the pace of small-town life, and feels duty-bound to use his office to help the people of the county.

But he constantly bemoans his lack of romantic options, and continually reflects back on the two women he has been unsuccessfully engaged to. Unfortunately for him, they both return to his life just often enough to keep him from totally moving on. Thirty one books into the series, readers want some resolution to the poor man’s dilemma.

And speaking of Hamish’s dilemmas, he is an unconventional cop in a force that needs conformity and convention. Because he does the job, and does it well, he is able to hang onto it. But he drives his superiors bonkers. He’s not respectful, he doesn’t care about the status quo, and he doesn’t want a promotion or recognittion, so they don’t understand him or trust him.

Speaking of his superiors, one of the things that started to get to me was the Blair/Daviot dynamic. DCI Blair is Hamish’s immediate superior. The problem is that Blair is inferior in every way, and resents Hamish for showing him up at every turn. Human nature says that because Hamish lets Blair take the credit, Blair feels even more inferior and more angry about it.

The one thing Blair is good at is being properly deferential (read that as subservient) to Superintendent Daviot, his boss. Daviot knows that Blair is not merely useless, but an active detriment to solving crimes, but he keeps on defending him and letting him remain in his job in spite of his obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence. And his on the job drinking.

Daviot is equally culpable, for refusing to allow any investigations into his own friends and fellow club members, even when the evidence clearly points in their direction. The symbiotic and toxic relationship between Blair and Daviot has been going on a bit too long. I want someone to pay, and someone in a higher position to recognize that one of them (Blair) has to retire (or be hospitalized). Their behavior is negligent if not criminal, and it’s frustrating to see it continue in book after book without being addressed.

So three Hamish Macbeths in a row is probably my limit for a while. I hope the author introduces some changes to the formula in future books.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Joint Rant: Til Dragons Do Us Part by Lorenda Christensen

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews> D Reviews> Draconismoi
til dragons do us part by lorenda christensenFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: paranormal romance
Series: Never Deal With Dragons, #3
Length: 179 pages
Publisher: Carina Press
Date Released: October 27, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Savannah Cavenaugh became a top art thief thanks to a secret ability—a dragonmorph, she can literally fly away from the scene of the crime. Next up: stealing a priceless painting out from under the snout of Lord Relobu, North America’s fearsome dragon ruler. True, she’s never had to work in the midst of Earth’s most polarizing nuptials before. Keeping her identity hidden will demand she get creative, to say the least.

Cameron Shaw has one last chance to prove himself. As Lord Relobu’s interim security head, he’ll ensure the world’s first interspecies wedding happens without a hitch. That means keeping an extra close eye on the wedding planner’s pretty young assistant. She’s adorable, but something’s not quite right.

Fumbling her way through bouquets and linens turns out to be the least of Savannah’s problems. Crushing on Relobu’s hottest human henchman was not part of the plan, and neither was revealing her—ahem—ferocious side. But when her archrival shows up to nab the very same painting she’s after, all bets are off…

Our Review:

never deal with dragons by lorenda christensenCass: First things first, I (quite unexpectedly) adored Never Deal With Dragons. Myrna was a far cry from the usual UF/PNR heroine. She wasn’t The One, didn’t specialize in Snapping Necks and Breaking Balls, and wasn’t burdened by a Tragic Past.

Instead, Myrna was just a brilliant, accomplished, career woman who loved her work (if not her boss). She kicked ass negotiating with dragons – without actually kicking dragon asses.

Despite this love, the blurb did not fill me with confidence. Pro: More time with Myrna and Trian. Con: everything else.

Marlene: I read Never Deal with Dragons because Cass made me do it. I figured that any romance that she actually liked must be good. And she was right. It was good, fun, and often funny. I loved the idea of a heroine who kicked butt with her mind instead of her brawn. However, the second book Dancing with Dragons (ranted at, ahem, reviewed here) did not live up to the first one. I made Cass read Til Dragons Do Us Part in the hope that Dancing with Dragons represented a sophomore slump. Admittedly, once I read the blurb, I didn’t have much hope. I figured that we would at least get a good rant out of it. And here we are. RANTING!

dancing with dragons by lorenda christensenCass: Liar! You wanted to bask in my disgust and outrage. Also, I completely and utterly forgot how much I hated Carol in the second book. So utterly useless.

Let us start with Savannah and her Family Of Thieves. Namely her sister-in-law, a renowned chef, at the top of her game who decided to turn to a life of crime. Why? Because this one time a dragon was totally mean, and insulted how she cooked steak! (Side note: did it not occur to her that a dragon might prefer his meat seared rather than medium-well?)

Why use your expertise and fame to do what you love? Much more logical to become the operations manager behind a small-time theft ring. God knows all women base their career trajectories on one run-in with a douchebag client.

Of course we ultimately can’t have a Law Breaker for a heroine (only dude-bro romantic bad-boy leads are allowed to break laws), so Savannah & Co must See The Light and Renounce Their Criminal Pasts. Perhaps they realize that a michelin starred chef can bring in mountains of legitimate money. Or there could be a “Tragic” Medical Issue for Baby Thief which will awaken them to the inherent evil they are bringing into a child’s life. Dragging a kid willy-nilly all over the country is completely within the best interests of said child. Taking a child to a medical facility to receive basic care on a consistent basis, however, results in a huge existential crisis. WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING WITH OUR LIVES?!?!

Marlene: People have been known to base their career trajectories on experiencing a series of douchebag clients or bosses. But generally not on just one. I digress.

It seems like sister-in-law the chef gave up her fantastic career for “true love”, another trope that Cass hates with a vengeance. I can understand helping one particularly hot (and charming) thief do something nasty but ultimately harmless to get back at said douchebag client, but not giving up an entire career. Unless we’re missing an explanation here, which we generally are in this book.

That this version of the universes has no insurance to speak about, and that procedures need to be paid in cash, was a nice bit of worldbuilding, which there aren’t nearly enough of. However, the existential crisis that ensues is over-the-top. Their only options are presented as “go straight” and cash in the retirement fund, or steal the painting and use the proceeds to pay for the medical crisis. While the crisis proceeds semi-logically from its introduction as the baby needs constant medical supervision, which is awkward when mom and dad are perpetually on the lam and lying about their identities, said medical crisis was not the only way to deal with all the adults deciding to go straight.

Cass: Setting aside the paper-thin motivations for thieving in general, let’s focus on the caper at issue. Savannah, a dragon-morph, grew up utterly isolated and thinking she was a lone freak in a hostile world. Then, lo-and-behold, she learns of Trian, dragon morph extraordinaire from Never Deal with Dragons.

Expected response: Holy shit, I am not alone in the universe! I must meet this guy and see if there are any social, psychological, or emotional benefits to having a friend who is of my species. He might also be excited to learn about my existence. We could share our First Transformation stories, talk logistics of controlling the shift, and maybe make arrangements for proper medical care. This could change my life!

Savannah’s response: Guess I’ll just rob him, during his wedding, for which he and his fiance are receiving multiple terroristic death threats.

Marlene: The caper that was, wasn’t, was, wasn’t. Well it wasn’t much of a caper, it seemed like its purpose in the story was to give Savannah an additional reason for giving up her life of crime and introducing us to the Boss From Hell. Working in that bridal agency would be enough motivation to never work anywhere in the industry again, just to avoid any possibility of running into the self-centered bitch who owned the place. She came off as a caricature of driven career-women everywhere, and I hated every moment she was onscreen. Meeting her should have driven Savannah right back to a life of crime, but instead it helped her “bond” with the other women she worked with. Which actually might happen, but in Savannah’s shoes I’d be counting the days until I was out of Tulsa and away from the wedding planner bitch and any legitimate work for a long time.

Cass: Marlene, I know you want to talk “romance.” But seriously, who the fuck is this guy? Why do I care about him? Hell, why does she even care about him? He’s about as interesting as a glass of milk. On that note, why is Mr. Whole Milk interested in her? There was no spark. No chemistry. No nothing. In fact, I can’t even remember his name. Did they have sex? Hell if I know. If they did, it was damn boring and I fell asleep reading it.

Marlene: I do not want to talk romance in this book, because there isn’t much to talk about, except to wonder where the chemistry went. The married couple have more chemistry than Savannah and what’s his name. (which is actually Cameron Shaw, and yes, they do manage to have sex, and it was a complete yawn, as well as a fade to black.) His whole purpose in this story seems to be to motivate Savannah to go straight. He’s not just Mr. Whole Milk, but he’s Mr. Whole Milk who has a record of being on the wrong end of Savannah’s art thievery. Otherwise he has no distinguishing features.

Cass: I saved the worst offense for last. WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?! For a book set in a world that has humans and dragons co-existing in a never-endingly complicated political and social quagmire (basically the highlight of the first two books), we spend almost no time focused on any actual dragon issue. Are there any people in the world at all curious as to how dragon morphs are created? Is it viral? Environmental exposure in utero? A recessive genetic trait? Anyone? Bueller?

Escape Rating: D for denying me sufficient dragons. Never Deal with Dragons was amazing. I am going to re-read it to get the taste of this out of my mouth. The DRACIM world has so many amazing stories in it, I just hope the author gets around to telling us some of them.

Marlene: Galen described Cass’ part of this review as a “Cass Rant ™” and I have to agree with his assessment. I also have to agree with Cass’ rant in general. Never Deal with Dragons was awesome. I read Til Dragons Do Us Part and couldn’t wait to be parted from it. I found it to be completely and utterly “meh”. This is not a good thing.

Escape Rating C-: which is totally in keeping with that ‘meh’. It’s not horrible, there just isn’t much there there. Or there here. Whatever. To give either a higher or lower rating, I’d need to have more reaction than this. Myrna was awesome in the first book. Carol was too stupid to live in the second book. Savannah is perfectly named; she’s a boring grassland with no distinguishing features.

Cass: Note to Galen: “Cass Rant ™” was spurred by Marlene’s insistence I read this. Which I had every intention of ignoring. So maybe we should call it Cass Rant On Demand ™”

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Bully of Order by Brian Hart

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> book reviews> C Reviews
bully of order by brian hartFormat read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook, hardcover
Genre: historical fiction
Length: 403 pages
Publisher: Harper
Date Released: September 2, 2014
Purchasing Info: Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Set in a logging town on the lawless Pacific coast of Washington State at the turn of the twentieth century, a spellbinding novel of fate and redemption—told with a muscular lyricism and filled with a cast of characters Shakespearean in scope—in which the lives of an ill-fated family are at the mercy of violent social and historical forces that tear them apart.

Keen to make his fortune, Jacob Ellstrom, armed with his medical kit and new wife, Nell, lands in The Harbor—a mud-filled, raucous coastal town teeming with rough trade pioneers, sawmill laborers, sailors, and prostitutes. But Jacob is not a doctor, and a botched delivery exposes his ruse, driving him onto the streets in a plunge towards alcoholism. Alone, Nell scrambles to keep herself and their young son, Duncan, safe in this dangerous world. When a tentative reunion between the couple—in the company of Duncan and Jacob’s malicious brother, Matius—results in tragedy, Jacob must flee town to elude being charged with murder.

Years later, the wild and reckless Duncan seems to be yet another of The Harbor’s hoodlums. His only salvation is his overwhelming love for Teresa Boyerton, the daughter of the town’s largest mill owner. But disaster will befall the lovers with heartbreaking consequences.

And across town, Bellhouse, a union boss and criminal rabble-rouser, sits at the helm of The Harbor’s seedy underbelly, perpetuating a cycle of greed and violence. His thug Tartan directs his pack of thieves, pimps, and murderers, and conceals an incendiary secret involving Duncan’s mother. As time passes, a string of calamitous events sends these characters hurtling towards each other in an epic collision that will shake the town to its core.

My Review:

It drove me crazy trying to figure out exactly where this book takes place. (The disadvantage of an eARC is that there is no map, even if the book has one). I think this stretch of coastline is somewhere between Gray’s Harbor and Cape Disappointment, but that covers a lot of ground.

I cared because I live in Seattle, and picked this book because it takes place in an extremely fictionalized Washington coast at the turn of the last century, around 1900. Early Seattle history is pretty damn colorful to begin with, so I wanted to see how an author would deal with making it even more picturesque. Or even possibly more picaresque.

For me, The Bully of Order is very much of a mixed feeling book. I love historical fiction, and I am always interested in the history of places I live or have lived, so this was all set up to be a two-fer; the parts of the story that aren’t in “The Harbor” (maybe Gray’s Harbor?) are set in Alaska.

The story has multiple viewpoints. Many multiple viewpoints. Narrators switch in and with regularity. And alacrity. To use an old expression, it seems as if everyone has a dog in this hunt.

There is a hunt. Multiple of them.

The story seems to be about Jacob Ellstrom and the complete mess he makes of his life and the lives of everyone around him. He comes to The Harbor with his young wife Nell, and claims to be a doctor. On the frontier, a lot of people claimed a lot of things that weren’t necessarily true “back in the States”, but a doctor is only as good as his self-confidence makes him (and the last patient he saved).

If there is one thing that Jacob Ellstrom doesn’t seem to have much of, it’s self-confidence. He lets everyone else define who he is. His wife thinks he’s a good man, but his older brother bullies him into bad behavior, including racking up massive debts and drinking to the point where he botches his medical practice.

There’s also a conspiracy of silence about his brother’s rape of Nell, Jacob’s wife. Matius Ellstrom is set up to be the embodiment of evil, and he pretty much succeeds at that. Escaping Matias, or running away instead of standing up to him, becomes the driving force in Jacob’s life, Nell’s life, and their son Duncan’s life.

The Harbor is a gritty logging boom town that the reader knows is going to bust; the omnipresent timber woods, do, in fact, run out. The town never gets civilized, and criminal lawlessness is always just one drink too many away.

The miasma that surrounds The Harbor reminds me of the dark atmosphere of Deadwood, but the storytelling in The Bully of Order isn’t nearly as clear. It definitely is just as bloody.

The story is both Jacob’s search for redemption, and Duncan’s search for retribution. At the end, it is left up to the reader to decide whether either of them achieved what they desired.

Escape Rating C+: The language used in the story is lyrical, even when (especially when) the events that are described are heading downward into an increasingly dark and complex history for the characters.

The chorus effect of the number of perspectives reminded me a bit of The Spoon River Anthology; every single person has their own part to play, and their own way of telling their particular bit. I particularly liked Kozmin the Hermit’s tale of the Russian scout who traveled with Baranov during the early days of the Russian outpost in Alaska. The Bully of Order has itself been compared to Russian literature, both in its darkness and the bleakness of its setting and story.

The Bully of Order is not a story for the faint-of-heart; bad men do bad things often for bad reasons, and if anyone escapes a terrible fate, it’s by luck and not by their actions. The Pacific Northwest was a rough and brutal place back then (true stories of the Klondike Gold Rush will make your hair stand on end), but out of that brutality arose the beautiful places that we know today.

The journey, at least as portrayed in The Bully of Order, was often a very dark and very sad one. No good deed, and very few of the bad ones, went unpunished.

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
The Girl in the Road by Monica ByrneFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, hardcover, paperback, audiobook
Genre: science fiction, literary fiction
Length: 337 pages
Publisher: Crown Publishing
Date Released: May 20, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

In a world where global power has shifted east and revolution is brewing, two women embark on vastly different journeys—each harrowing and urgent and wholly unexpected.

When Meena finds snakebites on her chest, her worst fears are realized: someone is after her and she must flee India. As she plots her exit, she learns of The Trail, an energy-harvesting bridge spanning the Arabian Sea that has become a refuge for itinerant vagabonds and loners on the run. This is her salvation. Slipping out in the cover of night, with a knapsack full of supplies including a pozit GPS system, a scroll reader, and a sealable waterproof pod, she sets off for Ethiopia, the place of her birth.

Meanwhile, Mariama, a young girl in Africa, is forced to flee her home. She joins up with a caravan of misfits heading across the Sahara. She is taken in by Yemaya, a beautiful and enigmatic woman who becomes her protector and confidante. They are trying to reach Addis Abba, Ethiopia, a metropolis swirling with radical politics and rich culture. But Mariama will find a city far different than she ever expected—romantic, turbulent, and dangerous.

As one heads east and the other west, Meena and Mariama’s fates are linked in ways that are mysterious and shocking to the core.

My Review:

This relatively near-future piece of literary fiction was recommended to me because I generally like SF. After having finished, I’ll say that the near-future post-global warming setting does not an SF novel make–at least in this case. What the changes in climate have done to alter living patterns in Asia and Africa is futuristic, but I think this story could have found other ways to present the journeying aspects of the story that didn’t require climate change.

It felt like the SF elements were a bit of a gimmick.

What we have is a tale of two journeys; Meena travels from Mumbai to Djibouti, and Mariama travels west-ish across Africa to Ethiopia. Even though the two women’s journeys are a few decades apart, it’s seems clear that they are going to meet in the end. Actually also in the middle, but we don’t know that until the end.

As we learn from their alternating first-person perspectives, both women are fleeing something. And the event that they are fleeing is so terrible that they each obscure the triggering event in myth and metaphor.

Mariama has an excuse for not being able to deal with what she saw. As her story begins she’s only 8 or so years old. Running away from witnessing her mother’s rape and not being able to admit to herself what exactly she’s running from is a kind of mental self-defense.

Meena won’t let herself remember what happened to her because she committed a crime that she can’t bear to face. But she is an adult when it happens.

Meena doesn’t just retreat mentally, she takes herself on a physical journey of nearly mythic proportions. She walks from Mumbai to Djibouti on a construct called “The Trail”, a series of blocks resting on the ocean and harvesting energy from wave-power. There are no mapped communities on the Trail, it is illegal to walk on it. Meena thinks that she has undertaken the 6,000 kilometer journey to reach Ethiopia and find the woman who killed her parents.

Of course, it’s not quite like that.

Mariama is just fleeing the scene of her mother’s rape, and running from the otherwise certainty that she will be enslaved exactly like her mother was, and eventually suffer the same fate. Mariama runs to save herself, and she mostly succeeds.

Until the future catches up with her, and with Meena, in a way that rewrites both of their journeys.

Escape Rating C-: Because the ending is intended to be shocking, the history and background of the main characters is fairly obscured. Also, they are each narrating their own stories, and they are both extremely unreliable narrators; Mariama because of her youth and inexperience, Meena because of her incredible self-deception.

And Meena spends a chunk of her walk along The Trail pretty much out of her head. The reader is never quite sure whether the story she tells is actual experience, metaphor or the ravings of a madwoman.

The Trail itself, and the changes in world climates that make it possible, sound really cool. I would love to have seen more about the way that the world has come to be. The coping and lack of coping, and downright crazy that have manifested in the world’s people would make an interesting story.

The Girl in the Road just wanders around the edges of possibilities, but doesn’t ever get there.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Black Ice by Susan Krinard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
black ice by susan krinardFormat read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook, paperback, mass market paperback
Genre: urban fantasy
Series: Midgard, #2
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Released: August 12, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Centuries ago, all was lost in the Last Battle when the Norse gods and goddesses went to war. The elves, the giants, and the gods and goddesses themselves were all destroyed, leaving the Valkyrie known as Mist one of the only survivors.

Or so she thought.

The trickster god Loki has reappeared in San Francisco, and he has big plans for modern-day Earth. With few allies and fewer resources—but the eyes of the gods and goddesses of an old world upon her—it’s up to Mist to stop him before history repeats itself.

My Review:

Mist by Susan KrinardBlack Ice is the followup to the first book in this series, Mist (reviewed here). I can definitely say that the title of this latest entry is appropriate, not just because there is literal “black ice” in San Francisco (in June!) but also in the sense of “things are always darkest just before they turn completely black”.

This story is not an upper. The situation starts out grim and keeps getting grimmer. Also Grimm-er, in the sense of myths and fairy tales coming entirely too true.

Mist, the titular heroine from the first book, spends this story fighting off Loki and other enemies while continuing to both gather and lose followers.

Some die, some betray her. Whichever is the worst outcome on any given occasion. There is a lot of nonstop action, but also a sense that little to nothing is going Mist’s way.

Black Ice feels a lot like a “middle book” in a trilogy, in that the plot is on a downstroke.

Mist gains new allies; she finds a couple of her sister valkyries and one of Odin’s ravens (either Huginn or Muninn, we don’t know which) arrives on the scene with its person.

Meanwhile Loki turns out to have a dangerous new ally of his own, and gets his hooks firmly embedded into some of Mist’s own allies. Things are not looking up.

Oh, and her mother comes back. Mist has no idea that her mother Freya is planning to the biggest betrayal of all, because she’s too wrapped up in the more immediate grief at the loss of her would-be lover, Dainn, back to Loki.

It’s too bad that Dainn is not the first (and probably not the last) from her inner circle to turn their coat towards the god who is trying to bring on the end of the world. The contest isn’t even serious to Loki, he’s just playing a very big game.

Mist wants to save the place that she’s come to love, and all the people who follow her. Some will die. Some have already died. All Mist can do is soldier on and hope that their sacrifices will be worth it.

She has no idea that she is in more danger than anyone else.

Escape Rating C+: The story setup is that Loki is the embodiment of evil, but I’m not sure that anyone is playing the good side of the eternal equation unless it’s Mist herself. Freya is not “good” by any human definition, even though she puts on a very good show of being benevolent. It’s pretty obvious that the agenda she is hiding is every bit as (possibly more) self-serving than Loki’s.

And while Freya’s agenda seems obvious to everyone but Mist, I’m less convinced about Loki’s. He’s still (and always) a trickster, but he’s quite capable of doing evil in the name of not so bad. Or at least survival.

Mist spends the whole story being run off her feet from battle to battle. She never catches a break. Also she gets betrayed so many times, and most of the betrayals are obvious up front. I wish she’d get a bigger clue.

The really interesting character this time out is Anna Strangland, accompanied by her raven-disguised-as-a-parrot, Orn. While Orn is obviously more than he appears, we don’t get a clear picture of what he is. (Bets on Huginn or Muninn). But Anna gets dragged out of her everyday life into Ragnarok, and manages not to be overwhelmed and to make a place for herself.

I hope that book 3 moves the story into an upswing. There really needs to be a bright side to look on, and where Black Ice ends, it isn’t even on the horizon.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Queen of the Dark Things by C. Robert Cargill

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
queen of the dark things by c robert cargillFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genre: Fantasy, Contemporary fantasy
Length: 448 pages
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Date Released: May 13, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill continues the story begun in his acclaimed debut Dreams and Shadows in this bold and brilliantly crafted tale involving fairies and humans, magic and monsters—a vivid phantasmagoria that combines the imaginative wonders of Neil Gaiman, the visual inventiveness of Guillermo Del Toro, and the shocking miasma of William S. Burroughs.

Six months have passed since the wizard Colby lost his best friend to an army of fairies from the Limestone Kingdom, a realm of mystery and darkness beyond our own. But in vanquishing these creatures and banning them from Austin, Colby sacrificed the anonymity that protected him. Now, word of his deeds has spread, and powerful enemies from the past—including one Colby considered a friend—have resurfaced to exact their revenge.

As darkness gathers around the city, Colby sifts through his memories desperate to find answers that might save him. With time running out, and few of his old allies and enemies willing to help, he is forced to turn for aid to forces even darker than those he once battled.

Following such masters as Lev Grossman, Erin Morgenstern, Richard Kadrey, and Kim Harrison, C. Robert Cargill takes us deeper into an extraordinary universe of darkness and wonder, despair and hope to reveal the magic and monsters around us . . . and inside us.

My Review:

The Queen of the Dark Things is a very direct sequel to Dreams and Shadows. And I can’t exactly say that I liked Dreams and Shadows. I found it interesting, but it also reminded me quite a bit of Neil Gaiman’s early work, particularly Neverwhere, with a slice of American Gods thrown in to give it body. Or several bodies.

dreams and shadows by c robert cargillBoth Dreams and Shadows and The Queen of the Dark Things are contemporary fantasy, of that particular flavor where myth still lives alongside of our technological world, and where our lack of belief in magic and the old ways is squeezing out a great deal of what was once wondrous in the world. Which doesn’t mean that the nasty stuff in the shadows isn’t still there, just that most of us can’t see it. The dark things are still plenty capable of screwing us over.

The Queen of the Dark Things is about living with the consequences of our actions. Just because much of the setting takes place in a slightly fantastic version of Austin, Texas and among the myths of the Australian dreamtime doesn’t change the essential truth. This is a story about consequences.

It’s also about a very “Clever Man” playing a very long game, in the hopes and not the certainty of getting the right people into the right places at the right time to achieve what he hopes will be the best outcome. A case of the needs of the future outweighing the needs of the present.

He maneuvers two children into positions of power, one to become the wizard Colby Stevens, who we first met in Dreams and Shadows; and the other to become The Queen of the Dark Things. He does it to prevent seventy two demons from being free to wreck havoc on the world, and he hopes that he is not setting up a future that will be worse.

The demons have been planning this particular game for five hundred years, and they don’t care how much damage they do. They just want to win.

But the demons have misjudged Colby. He wants what he has always wanted. And it has never been any of the things that they want. Which might just be enough to save him.

Escape Rating C: The story in The Queen of the Dark Things takes a long time to set up, and that’s on top of having read Dreams and Shadows last year. It veers into literary science fiction, so if you like your explanations long and lyrical, this might be for you. I would have preferred that the story get to the action quicker.

The plot is incredibly convoluted. The demons made a bet 500 years ago, and in order to tally it up, they’ve been messing about with shadow puppets ever since. While Colby was still a child learning magic, his mentor left him with an Aborigine shaman for a while, the “Clever Man” Mandu, and Mandu set up this particular future in the Dreamtime.

It’s a long, sad, crazy story, but Colby and Kaycee, the girl who becomes the Queen, have been set up by the demons and Mandu to take the demons down several pegs.

The issue I have with The Queen of the Dark Things was that I didn’t feel enough for the characters to be invested in their story or what happened to them. Although Colby is the central character, so much of the story is based on something that happened when he was a child, and he’s remembering rather than feeling–his story is stripped of the emotions. We don’t see Kaycee’s feelings or thoughts in the now; what there is of the real her is stuck in the past. Even Mandu is a ghost.

The character whom I cared about the most was the dog, Gossamer. He’s an awesome dog.

The story told in The Queen of the Dark Things had the potential to be a fascinating re-imagining of old mythology into modern storytelling. But it just didn’t catch me by the heart.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.