Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss

A+ #BookReview: How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django WexlerHow to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Dark Lord Davi, #1) by Django Wexler
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure, epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Dark Lord Davi #1
Pages: 432
Published by Orbit on May 21, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy in Django Wexler’s laugh-out-loud fantasy tale about a young woman who, tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord, decides to become the Dark Lord herself.
Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time.
This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord always wins, then maybe that’s who she needs to be. It’s Davi’s turn to play on the winning side.
Burningblade & SilvereyeAshes of the Sun Blood of the Chosen Emperor of Ruin

My Review:

The blurb for this title – a title just full to the brim with snarky, contradictory glory – is a bit more on point than the one for next month’s Service Model, which I read in the same weekend and was just really, really off.

But it’s still not quite there. This isn’t Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy. It could, sorta/kinda be a take on the very motley crew of Guardians and their very snarky leader with his love for 1980s music and pop culture, but isn’t really Groundhog Day because there really isn’t a redemption arc – at least not so far – because Davi doesn’t need to be redeemed.

What Davi, wannabe Dark Lord Davi, needs to do is figure out how to survive the fantasy world she’s been dumped into, nearly 300 damn times so far. Because her previous attempts have all ended more or less the same way, with her being killed by some bwahaha spitting orc bastard who has just taken over the world and killed all the humans he or she can find.

It’s not always been the SAME bwahaha bastard, but does that really matter?

Davi has decided that it absolutely does not. If she’s going to survive this clusterfuck, she’s going to have to change the rules. Starting with pounding the smug, lying manipulative bastard wizard who starts her down the path of inevitable destruction into the rocks that surround the pool she always emerges from until his head is paste.

Davi has had enough. Clearly.

(If the idea of this story sounds familiar, it is. Alix E. Harrow’s “The Six Deaths of the Saint”, included in the Best American SF/F of 2023 collection, has a VERY similar premise – taken much more seriously and without the snark.)

Davi has had enough of being the shining light of goodness and humanity, because all it gets her is dead. She may have a destiny on this world, but so far all she’s been destined to do is die.

Since her journey always restarts, always in that same pool, always listening to that same wizard’s crap when she inevitably dies again, this time she’s going to do an asshole playthrough – even though she’s already determined that whatever this is, it isn’t a videogame world.

Still, this is a concept she hasn’t tried before. It might work. It might be interesting. It might be good, just this once, to be bad.

Escape Rating A+: How to Become the Dark Lord AND Die Trying (the title absolutely needs to put some emphasis on that ‘AND’ because WOW those things should be contradictory), is a snarktastic romp, a wild, exuberant page-turning knock out of an epic fantasy and a complete and utter send up of the whole entire genre AND the horse it rode in on all at the same time.

That it isn’t the redemption story the blurb’s reference to Groundhog Day might lead you to believe doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things – and Dark Lord Davi certainly does have some VERY grand schemes – but it misses one of the points just a bit that would add to the sheer WTF’ery of the fun of the thing.

Because it’s not Groundhog Day, it’s Edge of Tomorrow. You remember THAT movie, the one where Tom Cruise has to repeat his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, over and over and over again, each and every time he gets killed – frequently and often – so that eventually he and Emily Blunt can put the pieces together fast enough to kill the alien invaders before they decimate Earth.

Part of the fun of that movie was watching Cruise get killed. Part of the fun of How to Become the Dark Lord is watching the Dark-Lord-in-Waiting fake it until she makes it, over and over and over again – knowing that death is just the excuse for another restart.

But Davi isn’t an evil dark lord, which becomes part of her problem as her journey towards dark-lord-dom continues. Davi really does care about her people – admittedly some more intimately than others. She takes care of her people. She’s reasonable and responsible and nurturing and does her best to avoid needless killing and senseless violence.

Emphasis on needless and senseless. She’s aware that some eggs are going to get broken in making this Dark Lord omelet but she’s never reckless with anyone except herself.

All that she’s done by switching sides is changing which people she’s willing to protect and defend. She’s changed who it is that she counts as ‘us’ in her calculus of war. It’s very much the perspective of Jonathan French’s The Grey Bastards, or Jacqueline Carey’s Banewreaker and Godslayer in that the orcs – and the other wilder-folk and non-humans – are the people she – and we – root for while the humans are off being inhumane to everyone not human and Davi is no longer there for that.

What makes this romp so very much of a romp is that Davi is snarky to the max, rather like one of John Scalzi’s, Simon R. Green’s or especially K.J. Parker’s and T. Kingfisher’s anti-hero-ish heroes. She never meets a quip she can’t make, a dig she can’t take, or an attitude she can’t cop, sometimes all at the same time. She’s a bit like Murderbot would be if Murderbot let it all hang out.

She’s also, manifestly, an epic fantasy hero who does not have all the answers – nor does she have any advisors who do, think they do or pretend they do. She’s faking it until she makes it – only to discover that once she’s made it there’s yet another hill to climb and yet another army to defeat.

Dark Lord Davi is simply awesome, as well as laugh out loud funny and occasionally downright embarrassing to herself and her minions. She’s a great hero to spend a long dark evening with! So I’m very glad that I did, and I can’t wait to do it again when she comes back for (cue the EXTREMELY apropos ‘80s earworm) Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

A- #BookReview: The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Brides of High Hill by Nghi VoThe Brides of High Hill (The Singing Hills Cycle, #5) by Nghi Vo
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy
Series: Singing Hills Cycle #5
Pages: 128
Published by Tordotcom on May 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Hugo Award-Winning Series returns with its newest standalone entry: a gothic mystery involving a crumbling estate, a mysterious bride, and an extremely murderous teapot.
The Cleric Chih accompanies a beautiful young bride to her wedding to an aging lord at a crumbling estate situated at the crossroads of dead empires. But they’re forgetting things they ought to remember, and the lord’s mad young son wanders the grounds at night like a hanged ghost.
The Singing Hills Cycle has been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award, the Ignyte Award, and has won the Hugo Award and the Crawford Award.

My Review:

When we first catch up with Cleric Chih as they are accompanying bride-to-be Pham Nhung and her family on their trip to make the final negotiations for Pham Nhung’s marriage to the older and much wealthier Lord Guo, the reader has the sense that they remember when Chih met Nhung at the gates of the Singing Hills Abbey back in the previous book, Mammoths at the Gates.

Just as Chih has been lulled into participating in this journey that seems so familiar, so are we.

Because the journey IS familiar, even if Chih can’t seem to recall precisely how they got there or, more importantly, why his friend and companion, the neixin Almost Brilliant, is not with them on this journey. Although, considering the events of Mammoths at the Gates, it’s not too difficult for the reader, or Chih, to understand why the situation back home might have been a bit too fraught for Almost Brilliant to leave.

But the story does seem familiar, only because it is. A young woman whose noble family is a bit down on their luck has been sold to a wealthy older man in order to restore the family’s status. She has no choice in the matter, her parents have little, and Lord Guo has it all.

However, when the Lord’s oldest son, mad and confused and drugged to his eyeballs, under heavy guard and seemingly out of his mind, interrupts the initial ceremonies it raises more than a few uncomfortable questions, which kickstarts Cleric Chih’s need to learn all the stories about the lavish old estate that Lord Guo reigns over with an iron hand – and the familiar story begins to unravel.

Spectacularly. Explosively. Into a story about revenge served, not ice cold, but in a gout of hot blood spraying out from under gnashing teeth and long, sharp claws.

Escape Rating A-: From the very first book in the Singing Hills Cycle, the marvelous The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Cleric Chih has moved from being outside the story, merely its chronicler, to being at the story’s center in Mammoths at the Gates.

This time around, Chih is as mesmerized as the reader by the story, as they are trapped within its web just as we ourselves are.

Which means that we have a sense at the beginning that Chih isn’t acting quite like themselves, and Chih has the same feeling. Also they desperately miss their friend Almost Brilliant, and so do we. We all collectively need the clear-sighted neixin to help us – and I’m including Chih in that ‘us’ – figure out what’s going on.

Of course, that’s why Almost Brilliant isn’t there. Or so it seems. Just as so many things in this story seem to be one thing but aren’t – quite.

So this is a story about illusions and lies. Nothing and no one is exactly who or what they are first presented to be. At first, it seems that what began as that rather traditional story of a girl being sold by her parents to a cruel older man is the story and we’re prepared to watch it be broken in some almost traditional way – either by Pham Nhung running away with Lord Guo’s son, who we know isn’t the madman his father’s frightened household says that he is – or with her death, whether by her own hand or Lord Guo’s.

In other words, we expect the illusion to break, but what we don’t expect, what Cleric Chih doesn’t expect, is the way that it breaks – and how thoroughly.

At the very beginning of The Brides of High Hill, Cleric Chih is remembering his late mentor, Cleric Thien, and an occasion where Thien told Chih that “Everything starts with a story,” and a very young and not yet cleric Chih asks, “But what does that mean?”

In the case of The Brides of High Hill, the story starts with a journey that looks like it might end in a romance but instead ends with something that looks like a bloody, twisted version of Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth, and is all the more surprising for that twist in its – and our – tails at the end.

Leaving this reader with bated breath waiting for the next story in the Singing Hills Cycle, even though it has neither a title nor a projected date of publication, because this series is just that good – and I’m just that hooked on it.

A- #BookReview: Black Shield Maiden by Willow Smith and Jess Hendel

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Black Shield Maiden by Willow Smith and Jess HendelBlack Shield Maiden by Willow Smith, Jess Hendel
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fantasy, historical fiction
Pages: 480
Published by Del Rey on May 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From WILLOW and co-writer Jess Hendel comes a powerful and groundbreaking historical epic about an African warrior in the world of the Vikings.
Lore, legend, and history tell us of the Vikings: of warrior-kings on epic journeys of conquest and plunder. But the stories we know are not the only stories to tell. There is another story, one that has been lost to the mists of time: the saga of the dark queen.
That saga begins with Yafeu, a defiant yet fiercely compassionate young warrior who is stolen from her home in the flourishing Ghanaian Empire and taken as a slave to a distant kingdom in the North. There she is thrust into a strange, cold world of savage shield maidens, tyrannical rulers, and mysterious gods.
And there she also finds something unexpected: a kindred spirit. She comes to serve Freydis, a shy princess who couldn’t be more different than the confident and self-possessed Yafeu.
But they both want the same thing: to forge their own fate. Yafeu inspires Freydis to dream of a future greater than the one that the king and queen have forced upon her. And with the princess at her side, Yafeu learns to navigate this new world and grows increasingly determined to become one of the legendary shield maidens.
For Yafeu may have lost her home, but she still knows who she is, and she’s not afraid to be the flame that burns a city to the ground so a new world can rise from the ashes. She will alter the course of history—and become the revolutionary heroine of her own myth.

My Review:

Through a series of unfortunate events that can, all too easily be laid at her own feet due to an excess of pride and an inability to keep her own temper, a young black woman is torn from her home village, enslaved, and dragged across the desert to the port city where she will be sold into who knows what fate.

Although at least part of that fate can be guessed from the lecherous expression on the face of the man offering gold for the purchase of her body.

That fate is interrupted by a sword – a sword wielded by a Viking warrior leading a raid on the coastal cities of North Africa. A female Viking warrior.

Alvtir saved Yafeu’s life because she could. Yafeu followed Alvtir back to her ship because Alvtir represents so much of what Yafeu wants to be. A warrior. A leader. A person who seems to be in charge of their own destiny in spite of the fact that females are supposed to be none of those things.

Yafeu believes that following Alvtir will get her what she has been searching for most of her life. The training to be a warrior in a place where she will be permitted if not encouraged to be the leader she was meant to be.

But Yafeu and the warriors to whom she has attached her hope and her future share neither a language nor even a common frame of reference or view of the world and the way it works. The desert that Yafeu called home is an entirely different world from the frozen fjords to which Alvtir and her Vikings are bound to return.

Once they make landfall in Skíringssal, Yafeu learns that she has merely traded one form of slavery for another, and that her hopes of training and respect were all in vain. But Alvtir sees that she may have found a hope for her own people – if that hope can be tempered and forged into a weapon.

So she waits and watches as Yafeu adjusts to her new life, learns the language and ways of a people not her own, and constantly searches for a way to forge a new path. A path that leads through the friendship of a disregarded princess to, finally and at long last, the coveted place among Alvtir’s shield maidens.

Just as the hope that these three women have forged together gets put to the torch of revolt and revolution.

Escape Rating A-: I came to this book by an odd route. I watched a playthrough of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla where the main character, Eivor, was played as female. (It’s possible to play the character as either gender and does not change the story – but it does change the visuals a LOT) I was riveted by the game even as a spectator, so when I saw the blurb for this book and realized that most of it took place in the same culture at the same time, I was hooked.

Even though the point of view character for Black Shield Maiden is Yafeu, Alvtir’s story bore more than enough resemblance to Eivor to keep me on the edge of my seat the whole way through.

Which I needed at the beginning, because the story does get off to a bit of a slow start. A start that reminded me of an entirely different story. If Alvtir is Eivor, then Yafeu is Ejii Ugabe, the titular Shadow Speaker of the first book in Nnedi Okorafor’s Desert Magician duology. Yafeu and Ejii have very similar story arcs, that they are both daughters in cultures that denigrate women, that both are feared and rejected by their home villages for powers and personalities that would be respected if they were male, and both have large and important destinies laid before them that can only be fulfilled if they come into their power by traveling far beyond their local horizon.

The story in Black Shield Maiden, while it is Yafeu’s story and told mostly from her perspective, also wraps itself around the fate of two other women; the warrior Alvtir and the Princess Freydis, who is also Alvtir’s niece.

Just as Yafeu has the dream of becoming a warrior and of finding the father who went on his own travels years before and never returned, Alvtir and Freydis have dreams of their own. Freydis’ dreams are initially small, she dreams of the fate that will be hers, marriage to an influential man of her father’s choosing and a home of her own. Yafeu’s introduction into Freydis’ life sets her on an entirely different course.

While this is Yafeu’s story – and we learn the place and the people and the culture because we learn it through her – Alvtir is the character upon whom the story pivots. Her people are at a crossroads in history, the fork in history’s road where Christianity swept all other religions before it and away. Alvtir sees another path for her people, a path that she hopes will lead to the preservation of their religion and their way of life, knowing that the only way to step on that path is to betray her brother, the king to whom she has sworn all her oaths.

The three women together have the opportunity to take new paths and forge new alliances, even knowing that the price will be that one of them will not live to see the future they bring about.

Obviously, I got caught up in this story, if not quite from the very beginning then certainly from the moment that Alvtir rescues Yafeu. And I’m glad I did even if I was up until 2 AM finishing it. At the end, I was caught by the idea that even though this is not a fictionalization of a real piece of history, it did fall just inside the line of plausibility. The Vikings who went ‘a-viking’ certainly traveled far and wide (including all the way to North America) both as raiders and as traders. Recently discovered DNA evidence proves that there WERE female Viking warriors.

In the end, I was reminded of Ash, A Secret History by Mary Gentle, the story of a female warrior in 15th century France that was not historical but was written as though it were the ‘secret history’ the title claimed it was. It was a story that, by the time it was finished, the reader WANTED to have been true.

Black Shield Maiden, especially in its rousing and hopeful ending, felt the same.

A- #BookReview: The Summer Swap by Sarah Morgan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Summer Swap by Sarah MorganThe Summer Swap by Sarah Morgan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 336
Published by Canary Street Press on May 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

"The perfect summer novel—sharp, smart and so much fun!" —Viola Shipman, USA TODAY bestselling author, on The Island Villa
Cecilia Lapthorne always vowed she’d never go back to Dune Cottage. So no one is more surprised than Cecilia to find herself escaping her own seventieth birthday party to return to the remote but beautiful cottage on Cape Cod—a place filled with memories. Some are good—especially memories of the early days with her husband, volatile artist Cameron, before his fame eclipsed their marriage. But then there are the memories she has revealed to no one. Especially not her daughter, Kristen, who hero-worshipped her father.
For aspiring artist Lily, Dune Cottage has been a refuge, albeit an illicit one. After dropping out of medical school, she’s cleaning houses on the Cape to get by, guilt-ridden for disappointing her parents. Unoccupied for years, the cottage seemed the perfect place to hide away and lick her wounds—until Cecilia unexpectedly arrives. Despite an awkward beginning, Lily accepts Cecilia’s invitation to stay on as her guest, and a flicker of kinship ignites.
Then Cecilia’s grandson, Todd—and Lily’s unrequited crush—shows up, sending a shock wave through their unlikely friendship. Will it inspire Lily to find the courage to live the life she wants? Can Cecilia finally let go of the past to find a new future? Because as surely as the tide erases past footprints, this summer is offering both Cecilia and Lily the chance to swap old dreams for new…

My Review:

There’s a saying about the best things to give children are “roots and wings”. Roots to ground them, and wings to fly free. The Summer Swap is a story about, not just those roots and those wings, but particularly about the way that family expectations can add so much ballast that those wings can’t lift their load – no matter how much they yearn to fly.

The story begins with Lily, who has literally fled her parents’ well-meaning but wrong-headed expectations. Her parents worked hard and sacrificed a lot to make their two middle-class but not highly compensated jobs stretch – with grants and scholarships – to get Lily into an elite private school, college and then medical school.

They wanted her life to be richly rewarded and financially secure and put every penny and every effort into making it happen. That her rich and snooty classmates saw Lily as a charity case and treated her accordingly was something Lily stuffed down deep inside – just as she buried her dreams of becoming an artist in favor of pursuing the practical medical degree her parents had scrimped and saved for – and seemed to have their hearts set on.

Until it broke her, and she dropped out of med school. At which point her parents broke her again and kept on doing it, smothering her with their anxiety and their concern and trying to find ways to fix her so that she could go back to school – which was the last thing she wanted.

Her parents meant well, and they did their best to do well. But their dreams weren’t her dreams and she couldn’t deny herself a minute longer so she left. When we meet her she’s cleaning expensive but empty bungalows on Cape Cod, giving herself a bit of mental space so she can figure out what she wants to do with her OWN life while finding a way to manage those heavy parental expectations.

While squatting in an empty bungalow because it’s tourist season and there’s no place around that she can afford to live in on the trendy, touristy, expensive Cape.

Which is where Cecilia Lapthorne comes in. Literally.

Cecilia, seventy-five years old and the recent widow of a larger-than-life artist, has let herself be effaced by the expectations of being the “great man’s” helpmeet while he wowed the masses and kept his name in the limelight. Now that he’s gone, her daughter’s expectations that she continue to serve her artist dad’s memory and legacy for the rest of her life are smothering her.

So she too runs away – to the “cottage” on Cape Cod where she and her late husband had some of their happiest – and one of the awfullest – times of their lives. Because she needs that same bit of mental space that Lily does – to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of HER OWN life.

Which is the point where Lily and Cecilia run into each other. They can give each other something that few seem to have given either of them – time and space to think, and an open mind and a listening ear to help them each think through the life ahead of them as well as the trials and errors behind them.

And in that open space, they are able to capture the dreams they left behind and move forward into brighter futures – no matter how many years they each might have ahead.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I absolutely fell in love with The Summer Seekers and was looking for the same kind of multi-threaded, multi-generational story about women at different milestones in their lives and the ways that they navigate the ties that bind and the ties that strangle – whether they are related to each other or not.

There are three women tangled together in this story, just as there were in The Summer Seekers. Cecilia, her middle-aged daughter Kristen, and 20something Lily. Cecilia and Kristen’s relationship is strained – frankly most of their relationships are strained for interconnected reasons – and Lily’s relationship with her parents is fraught as well.

What makes the interconnectedness work is that the strain in all of the relationships is wrapped around the same issue – each of them is protecting someone else by keeping secrets that probably should have seen the light of day years ago but haven’t for reasons that are realistically human.

And are also wrapped up in the female condition – that if you are female those around you (including, unfortunately, other women) often believe that you don’t know your own mind or haven’t thought things through or are being overly emotional. Something that’s especially true for Lily – her parents are sure that she’s too young to know her own mind and they only want what’s best for her. But equally true for Cecilia, who is seventy-five and recently widowed. Her daughter Kristen is just as sure that it’s her mother’s grief talking and she really isn’t in a position to make big decisions about her own life and that it will all look better later and that Kristen is just being protective and really knows best. When in fact Kristen is actually trying to manage her own grief over her father’s death by managing her mother – so of course it’s not working AT ALL for either of them.

Then again, Kristen is one of those people who ALWAYS knows best and is constantly managing everyone around her to make sure that her ‘best’ decisions are the ones that get implemented – never realizing that it often happens because it’s less stress for others to let her handle things rather than get bulldozed out of the way. Which explains at lot about the strain in all of the rest of Kristen’s relationships as well.

This particular triptych, similar to the triad relationship in The Summer Seekers, (I REALLY loved that book!), is something that this author is particularly adept at. (It worked a bit less well in The Book Club Hotel with four instead of three and YMMV)

All three women have similar issues, in that they need to stop trying to manage other people’s emotions, responses and expectations and set boundaries on their own – particularly with each other in the case of Cecilia and Kristen.

I did figure out Cecilia’s big secret fairly early on – but there was still an impact in seeing it revealed to the others and the way in which it was revealed. At the same time I was never quite sure exactly what the stumbling block was in Lily’s romance but was happy to see her happy all the same. And I was thrilled to see Cecilia get her own second-time-around HEA because she’d earned it, deserved it and was utterly entitled to it. I left the story still not sure how to characterize Kristen’s progress – but on the other hand, I’m not sure she is yet either.

If you enjoy stories like this, stories where women are at the center of all the action as well as all the emotions, where a romance may occur but isn’t remotely the entirety of the point, or simply like spending time with women who you’d love to have coffee with after, or simply books where you can feel the summer breeze wafting by as you read, The Summer Swap is just the ticket. And if one summer book is not enough, don’t forget to pick up this author’s other terrific ‘beach reads’ The Summer Seekers AND Beach House Summer to extend the breeze of your summer reading vibe!

A- #BookReview: People in Glass Houses by Jayne Castle

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: People in Glass Houses by Jayne CastlePeople in Glass Houses (Ghost Hunters, #16) by Jayne Castle
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure romance, futuristic, paranormal romance, romantic suspense, science fiction romance
Series: Harmony #16
Pages: 313
Published by Berkley on May 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Dive into the alien world of Harmony in this new novel by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Castle.
His name is Joshua Knight. Once a respected explorer, the press now calls him the Tarnished Knight. He took the fall for a disaster in the Underworld that destroyed his career. The devastating event occurred in the newly discovered sector known as Glass House—a maze of crystal that is rumored to conceal powerful Alien antiquities. The rest of the Hollister Expedition team disappeared and are presumed dead.
Whatever happened down in the tunnels scrambled Josh’s psychic senses and his memories, but he’s determined to uncover the truth. Labeled delusional and paranoid, he retreats to an abandoned mansion in the desert, a house filled with mirrors. Now a recluse, Josh spends his days trying to discover the secrets in the looking glasses that cover the walls. He knows he is running out of time.
Talented, ambitious crystal artist Molly Griffin is shocked to learn that the Tarnished Knight has been located. She drops everything and heads for the mansion to find Josh, confident she can help him regain control of his shattered senses. She has no choice—he is the key to finding her sister, Leona, a member of the vanished expedition team. Josh reluctantly allows her to stay one night but there are two rules: she must not go down into the basement, and she must not uncover the mirrors that have been draped.
But her only hope for finding her sister is to break the rules…

My Review:

We all know the way that phrase ends, don’t we? “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” It’s a somewhat more potentially kinetic way of talking about the “pot calling the kettle black.” Or putting it yet another way, people who have the same faults should resist poking at each other along the same fault lines.

As it turns out, this particular story is also a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – although Joshua Knight and Molly Griffin want to be much more than friends the moment they meet, in spite of both of them living in the glass house of having extremely high levels of paranormal talent that they keep under wraps.

Because too much power can be extremely dangerous – especially when all the power is encased in the fragile mind of a human. Any human.

Although at the moment they meet, both Joshua and Molly do happen to be rather fragile humans – particularly in the context of the not-totally-explored and still all too frequently dangerous lost Terran colony on Harmony. A planet where high-resonating crystal artifacts left on the planet by aliens have caused, raised and enhanced the psychic powers of the humans who have occupied the planet for more than two centuries.

Joshua Knight is considered to be psi-burned. He was a talented guide and navigator to Harmony’s fascinating but treacherous underworld, and he lost ALL the members of his last expedition.

An expedition that included Molly Griffin’s sister Leona. Molly needs Joshua to lead her to where he lost her sister. Joshua needs Molly to help him regain his lost memories of where he lost the expedition in order to have even a chance at making that happen.

Lucky for them, their talents dovetail in a harmony that neither of them ever expected. But not lucky at all for the mastermind who set Joshua up to take the fall and did not reckon, at all, on the dogged persistence of the Griffin sisters.

And not that the villain doesn’t have a plan B to take care of all of those new, pesky, loose ends that Molly and Joshua have managed to unravel in the crystal palaces hidden under Harmony.

Escape Rating A-: Once upon a time, a historical romance author writing under the name of Amanda Quick introduced an organization of physically adept practitioners and mad scientists into her Victorian Era set romances – and the Arcane Society was born. In one of her other personas, Jayne Ann Krentz, the author carried the Arcane Society in the 20th and 21st centuries. Under a third name, Jayne Castle, she created the lost Terran colony world of Harmony and eventually admitted that the original colonists included a considerable number of members of, you guessed it, the Arcane Society.

It’s been over two centuries since Harmony was cut off from Earth. The population has evolved to include paranormal talents, many of which have become specialized in response to the resonating crystal artifacts that aliens left behind on their new home world. Their society has also evolved into the close-knitted, family oriented, relatively stable structure that we see in this series.

The population also still throws out the occasional mad scientist.

Which is part of Molly and Leona Griffin’s background, although it’s not really part of this story – except in the trust issues that background left in both women – although the next book in the series will be going there – and I’m seriously looking forward to it.

But in the meantime, this book is focused in Harmony’s present, and follows directly after the events of Guild Boss while putting brand new characters in the literal hot seat – along with another of Harmony’s adorable, scene-stealing predators, Newton the intrepid dust bunny.

As is often the case in the entire extended Arcane Society/Harmony series, there’s both a crime to solve and a talented person to save from what seems like the brink of madness. Molly’s sister is missing, the search has been called off. Molly is determined to pursue the only lead she has left, the supposedly burned out has-been navigator, Joshua Knight.

Joshua is the one who needs saving – he’s pretty sure he’s going mad, and the crazy house he’s squatting in is helping to finish the job that the mess of that lost expedition merely started. Joshua and Molly are each other’s last chance, so they grab onto that chance – and each other – with both hands.

That they manage to find the lost expedition – as wonderful as that is – opens up an entirely new can of worms so that the chief worm can finally get squashed. Only to open the way for yet another and even more dangerous worm – or perhaps that should be wyrm – to emerge from the shadows.

The romance between Molly and Joshua is as hot as the energy they both channel, but the way that their mutual needs and insecurities keep bumping up against one another keeps the relationship from feeling like insta-love. They also have a lot more in common than just their tangling insecurities, leaving the reader to believe that they really do have a good chance at an HEA even after the adrenaline of this case evens out.

To make a long story – or review – short; Harmony is a fascinating world, the paranormal powers keep everything and everyone involved tuned up to the max, the dust bunnies are both adorable and deadly, the romances are scorching, and the tension of whatever wrong needs to be righted or case that needs to be solved has been keeping this reader on the edge of her seat from the very first and this entry in the series continues that happy trend. Visit Harmony and settle in for a long, highly charged, utterly captivating binge-read.

And, also very much to the good, the way that the resolution of this adventure hints so tantalizingly at the next gives this fan of the series a lot of high-rez hope for the next – which doesn’t appear to be coming nearly soon enough!

Grade A #BookReview: Lost Birds by Anne Hillerman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Lost Birds by Anne HillermanLost Birds (Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #27) by Anne Hillerman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, thriller
Series: Leaphorn & Chee #27, Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #9
Pages: 304
Published by Harper on April 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman, a thrilling and moving chapter in the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series involving several emotionally complex cases that will test the detectives in different ways. Joe Leaphorn may be long retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, but his detective skills are still sharp, honed by his work as a private detective. His experience will be essential to solve a compelling new finding the birth parents of a woman who was raised by a bilagáana family but believes she is Diné based on one solid clue, an old photograph with a classic Navajo child’s blanket. Leaphorn discovers that his client’s adoption was questionable, and her adoptive family not what they seem. His quest for answers takes him to an old trading post and leads him to a deadly cache of long-buried family secrets. As that case grows more complicated, Leaphorn receives an unexpected call from a person he met decades earlier. Cecil Bowleg’s desperation is clear in his voice, but just as he begins to explain, the call is cut off by an explosion and Cecil disappears. True to his nature, Leaphorn is determined to find the truth even as the situation grows dangerous. Investigation of the explosion falls in part to Officer Bernadette Manuelito, who discovers an unexpected link to Cecil’s missing wife. Bernie also is involved in a troubling investigation of her an elderly weaver whose prize-winning sheep have been ruthlessly killed by feral dogs. Exploring the emotionally complex issues of adoption of Indigenous children by non-native parents, Anne Hillerman delivers another thought-provoking, gripping mystery that brings to life the vivid terrain of the American Southwest, its people, and the lore and traditions that make it distinct.

My Review:

“We grow too soon old and too late smart,” a saying that has its roots far from the Navajo tribal lands in the Four Corners area, but nevertheless applies to many of the characters in this 27th entry in the long-running Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito series.

Especially, but absolutely not exclusively, to the ‘Legendary Lieutenant’ himself, retired Navajo Nation Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn – the original protagonist of this series back when it began back in 1970 in The Blessing Way, written by author Anne Hillerman’s father Tony Hillerman.

As this series is written in a kind of ‘perpetual now’, Leaphorn isn’t quite as old as the number of years between 1970 and 2024 would lead one to expect, But he has aged from a man in his prime into retirement – and the start of a second career as a private investigator.

He’s not as young or as fast as he used to be – even if he’s not always willing to admit it – while the first young officer he mentored, Jim Chee, has just been promoted to Lieutenant himself. Leaphorn’s other mentee, Officer Bernie Manuelito, now Chee’s wife, is still grieving a miscarriage, and stinging after losing out on a promotion of her own.

The case they ALL find themselves working on – if not always together – begins with an explosion at a local school. Joe is on the phone with the survivor of one of his earliest cases when he hears the explosion through the phone, the call drops – or the caller does, and Joe is left hanging.

Bernie gets called to the school, because the place is on fire – or at least one specific building is. She’s had some training in dealing with explosions and their aftermath – and this case unfortunately looks like an occasion for her to use those skills.

Which is exactly what it turns out to be. Which is also the last straightforward aspect of the whole case. The ONLY saving grace to the disaster is that it happened on a Saturday morning and no students were present to be caught up in the flames.

With the increasing amount of violence on all school campuses across the country, the Navajo Police, the FBI, and every other possible jurisdiction fear that the conflagration was both cleverly and deliberately set. And they could be right. There are certainly plenty of signs that point that way – including the absence of a custodian with a whole lot of financially troubling motives for something nefarious.

Or, as much as Leaphorn and the cops he trained do not believe in coincidences, that chain of terrible events could be the result of them. After all, the other case that Leaphorn is working on turns out to be riddled with them – to considerably better results.

But it’s the much too personal case that catches up to Leaphorn that forcibly reminds him that time is catching up to him – and that there are some things it is best to say before it is too late.

Escape Rating A: Just as there are three investigators in this story, there are three cases, but the cases are not in parallel, do not intersect and mostly lead back to Joe Leaphorn, which is fitting as he is the place where the whole series began.

The big case, the official investigation into the explosion and fire at the school, is the case that takes up the least of Leaphorn’s time but the most of Bernie Manuelito’s time and effort – and pushes her up against her issues with her job disappointment and her new boss.

But the case of the explosion is the case with the largest number of facets in the present, and the only part that doesn’t do a deep dive into any of the investigators’ pasts or personal lives. Which is a good thing because there is plenty of that on the parts of all of the potential suspects.

That part of the case is interesting because the track it goes down isn’t remotely fruitful – and yet it manages to lead to the correct result in spite of itself and everyone’s assumptions about the hows and the whys of the thing. There turn out to be plenty of arrests to go around – but not for any of the reasons that anyone first suspects.

Leaphorn’s private case is the one that delves into a bit of history, and rights a single tragedy in a vast sea of wrongs that no one has the power to fix in its entirety. It’s this case that the book is titled after, as a “Lost Bird” in the Navajo context is a child who was adopted out of their tribal community. Joe’s client may be one of those “Lost Birds”, one who is determined to find out as much of the truth as is still there to find before everyone left who might have known a bit of that truth passes away.

Last, but not least, are the personal aspects of this series. While Bernie’s ongoing struggle to balance her career as a police officer alongside of her more traditional obligations as daughter and sister often features in this series, and a further chapter of her difficulty in managing that balancing act does occur, the big personal ‘case’ in this case is Leaphorn’s – which is a surprise and a revelation because Leaphorn is a person who very much keeps himself to himself – and this time that’s impossible.

All of which made Lost Birds another enthralling chapter in this long-running saga. While I don’t think a new reader would need to start back at the very, very beginning, picking this series up with Spider Woman’s Daughter, the story where Anne Hillerman picks up her father’s legacy just as Bernie Manuelito investigates the shooting of her mentor and father-figure Leaphorn is a great place to begin.

This entry in the series feels like it might be Joe Leaphorn’s swan song. He comes to some conclusions at the end that leave the impression that he’s going to move from his second act as a private investigator to a third act as a consultant – one that will hopefully put him less in the line of fire. Not that I think the series is going to end – please no – but rather that his role is going to be a bit more reduced. Whatever happens, I’m certainly looking forward to finding out – hopefully this time next year.

A+ #BookReview: A Murder Most French by Colleen Cambridge

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: A Murder Most French by Colleen CambridgeA Murder Most French (American In Paris Mystery, #2) by Colleen Cambridge
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: culinary mystery, foodie fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: American in Paris Mystery #2
Pages: 272
Published by Kensington on April 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Postwar Paris is surging back to life, and its citizens are seizing every opportunity to raise a glass or share a delicious meal. But as American ex-pat Tabitha Knight and chef-in-training Julia Child discover, celebrations can quickly go awry when someone has murder in mind . . .
The graceful domes of Sacré Coeur, the imposing cathedral of Notre Dame, the breathtaking TourEiffel . . . Paris is overflowing with stunning architecture. Yet for Tabitha Knight, the humble building that houses the Cordon Bleu cooking school, where her friend Julia studies, is just as notable. Tabitha is always happy to sample Julia’s latest creation and try to recreate dishes for her Grand-père and Oncle Rafe.
The legendary school also holds open demonstrations, where the public can see its master chefs at work. It’s a treat for any aspiring cook—until one of the chefs pours himself a glass of wine from a rare vintage bottle—and promptly drops dead in front of Julia, Tabitha, and other assembled guests. It’s the first in a frightening string of poisonings that turns grimly personal when cyanide-laced wine is sent to someone very close to Tabitha.
What kind of killer chooses such a means of murder, and why? Tabitha and Julia hope to find answers in order to save innocent lives—not to mention a few exquisite vintages—even as their investigation takes them through some of the darkest corners of France’s wartime past . . .

My Review:

According to Julia Child, “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

While Child absolutely did say that, she certainly hadn’t said it yet at in 1950, the time this second book in the American in Paris Mystery series takes place, directly after the events of the first book in this delicious historical mystery series, Mastering the Art of French Murder.

Julia Child is too busy learning French cooking, living her larger-than-life life in Paris AND at the beginning of writing her masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, when this series takes place.

Meaning that Julia – as much as she steals every scene in which she appears – is not the amateur detective protagonist of this series, even if she is every bit as much an American in post-war Paris as her best (fictional) friend Tabitha Knight.

Tabi probably would not entirely agree with that opening quote from Julia. It’s not fear of failure that dooms so many of Tabi’s cooking forays, it’s the fear of disappointing – yet again – her two messieurs, her elderly grandfather and his partner, her adopted Oncle Rafe.

Tabi does, however, most definitely have a what-the-hell attitude, but it seems to be increasingly focused, not on cooking but on murder. Not committing them, of course, but solving them. It’s an attitude that is immeasurably helped by just how many corpses she seemingly trips over.

The way that corpses seem to follow in her wake, and her inability to ignore the clues that bubble up before her, unfortunately looks like it’s helping police judiciaire Inspecteur Étienne Merveille into entirely too many headaches, if not an early ulcer.

Because somehow, no matter how many times Merveille warns her away, when Tabi rushes in where even angels would fear to tread, Merveille is always on hand to rescue her.

Maybe Tabi is following Julia’s three-part plan for managing men after all – no matter how many times the lady protests too much otherwise.

Escape Rating A+: If you loved the first book in this series – and who didn’t? – you will run, not walk to get this second book because it’s every bit as charming as the first. If you still need a bit of convincing, I’m going to get right to that.

But before I do, if you haven’t read Mastering the Art of French Murder and aren’t sure whether you can start the series here – you can. Everything you need to catch up does get enough of an explanation to make it work. Howsomever, that first book is delightful and delicious so even if you do start here you’ll want to go there immediately afterwards!

Yes, this review is full of squee. It’s that kind of book and that kind of series.

This time around, Tabitha gets involved in the case not because she’s a suspect, but because the murder happens literally right before her eyes – as does the second murder. Also before Julia’s eyes as well, and she absolutely can’t resist egging Tabitha on whenever she falters in her determination the least little bit.

Which is pretty much true for Julia all the way around.

The case is a twisted puzzlement – but in it’s ever increasing list of victims and in its choice of methods. Increasing both Tabitha’s and the reader’s fascination is the way that the string of murders links back to the late war, the simmering resentments of the surviving Resistance fighters and the blot on the French psyche that the collaborators represent.

Then the whole thing dives into the catacombs. Literally as well as figuratively, and the secrets that are hidden among the bones – not all of which are ancient.

When her messieurs receive a beautifully wrapped bottle of pilfered, poisoned wine – just as the first two victims did, Tabitha throws aside her remaining qualms and cautions to throw herself into an investigation that gets her thrown into the pitch black darkness of the catacombs.

Tabitha rescues herself – which is definitely part of her charm for this reader – but she’s afraid she won’t be able to run across Paris fast enough to save her messieurs. Fortunately for Tabi, her apple didn’t fall far from the family tree – and Inspecteur Merveille has been following her a LOT more closely than she imagined.

Their relationship – whatever it might turn out to be – is one of the teasingly dangling threads left at the end of this book. The mystery gets tidily wrapped up, but nearly everyone in Tabi’s life seems to think that Merveille has a tendre for her that would be worth exploring.

If it’s not obvious from all the squeeing, I would love for there to be a third book in this series and possibly more. For one thing, I have to see if Tabitha continues to follow that three-part plan of Julia’s for managing men. Tabi has the first part completed, as she actually managed to feed the man a surprisingly edible – for her at least – Croque Monsieur albeit without the bechamel sauce. Step two in Julia’s plan is to flatter the man which should be easy enough to do as he just saved her life and is quite competent at everything she’s seen of him so far.

Tabitha should have plenty of opportunities as the series continues – which I am oh so hopeful that it will. Because it looks as if investigating murders is looking more and more like it’s Tabitha’s answer to one of Julia’s instructions, to “find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”

“Bon appetit!”

#AudioBookReview: Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B+ Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Close to Death by Anthony HorowitzClose to Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #5) by Anthony Horowitz
Narrator: Rory Kinnear
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Hawthorne and Horowitz #5
Pages: 419
Length: 9 hours and 12 minutes
Published by Harper, HarperAudio on April 11, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In New York Times–bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound
Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.
It is the perfect idyll until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kentworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and they quickly offend every last one of their neighbours.
When Giles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator that can be called on to solve the case.
Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?

My Review:

There’s an old saying that familiarity breeds contempt. In the case of Giles Kenworthy and the other residents of Riverview Close it seems as if the contempt came pre-installed – at least on his side and well before he actually got to know any of his neighbors. If indeed he ever bothered to try.

Kenworthy seems to be one of those smug, self-involved, ultra-privileged individuals who go through life completely unable to see other people as, well, people. Meaning that he simply doesn’t notice how much the noise and smoke from his backyard barbecues affects the neighbors he can’t be bothered to invite, he doesn’t care that the loud music he plays on his convertible wakes up the entire neighborhood when he comes home in the middle of the night and parks the damn car in the middle of a shared driveway and blocks the neighbors in.

It seems as if Kenworthy’s inconsideration knows no bounds. He’s certainly brought utter disharmony to what was formerly seemed to be a close-knit and completely harmonious little community.

But is being a boor – even to the point of being a total arsehole (it’s arse, they’re English) – enough of a reason to actually murder someone?

That’s the problem that confronted Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan five years ago when he began his investigation of the murder of Giles Kenworthy, in the foyer of his expensive home, with a crossbow bolt through his throat.

And it’s the exact same question confronting Tony Horowitz – along with the ridiculously short deadline his editor has given him for the fifth book in the series following the investigations of former Metropolitan Police Detective Daniel Hawthorne as Tony follows literally behind the man as his bumbling sidekick.

But not this time, not exactly. Because Hawthorne can’t exactly call up an interesting murder to order. So instead of following the detective as he works a case, Tony is stuck with following Hawthorne on a past case through the extensive notes left by Hawthorne’s previous assistant, the considerably less bumbling John Dudley.

Tony is even more curious about the man who preceded him than he is about whodunnit. By this point in his association with Hawthorne he knows that he’s not going to get even close to the solution until Hawthorne leads him there – most likely by the nose at that.

Which leaves Tony doing a bit of snooping on his own – not into Giles Kenworthy’s murder – but into John Dudley’s exit from Daniel Hawthorne’s life. Something that it looks like no one wants him to look into – but that might just lead him back to an entirely different whodunnit.

Escape Rating B+: Hawthorne drives Tony crazy. This series generally drives me crazy. This particular entry drove me so crazy I switched from the audio – which was, as always in this series, and with this narrator, marvelous – to the ebook at the halfway point because I was going nuts trying to figure out anything at all. My luck is no better than Tony’s usually is because the cases Hawthorne ends up investigating are so bizarre AND the man dribbles out clues like a miser drops pennies.

But by that point I was so caught up in the thing that I didn’t thumb to the end to find out whodunnit – I just read faster to get there in one hour instead of five for the audio.

At first, I have to say that I only hung in because of the audio. Because the first section is all set up and it takes more than long enough that the reader is downright grateful when the body finally drops – particularly as the body that drops seems like it couldn’t have belonged to a more deserving fellow.

At that point, the story switches from third person – which just felt WRONG for this series because it is – back to Tony’s first person perspective where he proceeds to hang a lampshade over just how trite and boring that long set up is.

After all, Giles Kenworthy was a seriously deserving murder victim and all of the issues among the residents of Riverview Close – except for the woman suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and the death of that poor dog – are very much first world problems and rich people’s first world problems at that. Which does lead back to the question of whether the man deserved to be murdered.

(Maybe for the dog, but not the rest. For the rest, maybe some slashed tires, or a thorough egging of both the house AND the open convertible. Or some maybe not-so-petty vandalism. But not murder.)

Normally this series works by following Tony as he follows Hawthorne and bumbles his way through the man’s genius and misanthropy to a solution. This time was a bit different, and I don’t think it entirely worked.

Because Hawthorne is reluctant to have Tony look into this case, parsimonious with clues and information, and doing his damndest to micromanage Tony’s writing process to the point of obstruction, the story is on two tracks.

The first is, obviously, the murder. Which is as twisty as ever and Tony is as lost as always but doggedly pursuing a solution even though he can’t see it because he knows Hawthorne can. At least until that thread of the story goes temporarily – and deliberately – pear-shaped.

But it’s the other track that gave me some pause, because part of the point of the series is that Tony knows little or nothing about Hawthorne and Hawthorne does his best to make sure it stays that way. His mystery is part of, I don’t want to say charm because let’s just say that’s not Hawthorne’s strongest suit, but rather it’s part of the way he works AND what keeps Tony following him. This entry in the series pulled that curtain back a bit in ways that I really hope pay off later because it seemed like some of them belonged more to the author’s James Bond novels than Hawthorne and Horowitz.

In the end, I have to admit that I’m every bit as hooked on this series, as Tony is hooked on following after Hawthorne, sometimes in spite of himself. The books certainly drive me every bit as crazy as Hawthorne does Tony.

Which means that, as differently crazed as this entry was from some of the previous books in the series, I’m still riveted – sometimes in spite of myself. So I’ll be back for the next – whenever either Hawthorne manages to run across a conveniently timed twisted murder – or Tony gets faced with an urgent deadline for book six!

A- #AudioBookReview: The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ RozanThe Murder of Mr. Ma (Dee & Lao, #1) by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan
Narrator: Daniel York Loh
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Dee & Lao #1
Pages: 312
Length: 8 hours and 24 minutes
Published by Recorded Books, Soho Crime on April 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For fans of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, this stunning, swashbuckling series opener by a powerhouse duo of authors is at once comfortingly familiar and tantalizingly new.
Two unlikely allies race through the cobbled streets of 1920s London in search of a killer targeting Chinese immigrants.
London, 1924. When shy academic Lao She meets larger-than-life Judge Dee Ren Jie, his life abruptly turns from books and lectures to daring chases and narrow escapes. Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death withg a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders—or are they next in line as victims?
John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan’s groundbreaking collaboration blends traditional gong'an crime fiction and the most iconic aspects of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Dee and Lao encounter the aristocracy and the street-child telegraph, churchmen and thieves in this clever, cinematic mystery that’s as thrilling and visual as an action film, as imaginative and transporting as a timeless classic.

My Review:

It can be considered both sad and ironic that Ma Ze Ren had left his native China in pursuit of fortune and adventure among the Chinese Labour Corps in the trenches of World War I, survived, immigrated to London and opened a successful shop dealing in Chinese antiquities – having seemingly attained all that he had originally sought – only to be killed in the midst of his shop by means of one of those self-same antiquities he intended to sell.

When they both served in the Labour Corps, Ma Ze Ren and several of his compatriots had come to an agreement with the man who served as the liaison between the Chinese Labour Corps members and the British officers who used them as cannon fodder, Judge Dee Ren Jie, that Dee would make arrangements to send their bodies back home if the chances of war required such service.

The war may be long over when this story opens in 1924, but that contract still holds Judge Dee, so he has come to London to take care of Ma’s final arrangements. But before he can even begin, Dee is taken up in the midst of a labor riot along with other Chinese men protesting for fair wages and treatment in a city that considers them something less than fully human.

Which is where the chronicler of this tale, scholar and author Lao She, comes into the tale. Dee needs to be out of jail before an enemy realizes that he has this nemesis in his clutches. Bertrand Russell wishes to help his friend Dee without getting his own name attached to this scandalous business.

And Lao She is bored out of his mind – even if he is unwilling to admit it to himself – spending his days teaching Chinese language and literature to students who have no love or care for the language or the people who speak it, merely a desire to get a leg up on their fellows in the commercial opportunities opening up in a modernized China.

Lao is supposed to be clandestinely exchanged for Dee – but Lao gives away the game with every move he makes and every word he’s not supposed to be uttering. So a prison break it is, with Lao, Dee and Russell scattering along with the rest of the prisoners.

But Dee still has a mission, Lao has acquitted himself well in the melee and has acquired a taste for danger and adventure he never realized blazed within him. Reluctant partners, resistant friends, together they will uncover not one but two murder plots in a fascinating tale that takes readers from the homes of the intelligentsia to the alleys of Limehouse – with a stop among the pioneers of the silver screen along the heights and depths of its way – only to arrive frantic and breathless at one of the first principles in any investigation:

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Escape Rating A-: The Murder of Mr. Ma was the highlighted review in the online mystery/crime review newsletter First Clue several months ago, and something about that review caught my attention and held it more than long enough for me to mark the title in Edelweiss as “Highly Anticipated” and immediately grab it when my anticipation was rewarded with the availability of an eARC and later an early audiobook.

(The above is a hint. If you love mysteries, subscribe to First Clue!)

The comparison in many reviews of this book are to Holmes and Watson, particularly the Holmes played by Robert Downey Jr. in the Guy Ritchie movies – because that particular version of Holmes is considerably more active than most.

As has been confessed before, I am a sucker for a Holmes pastiche, so I would have been interested in this book on that basis alone, but I think that quick comparison sells Dee and Lao and The Murder of Mr. Ma a bit short in this particular instance.

There is a surface resemblance in that Dee is the more active and experienced investigator – with or without resorting to the martial arts – while Lao, like Watson, is the newbie at this particular game and is tasked with creating a record of the adventure rather than necessarily figuring out the solution on his own. And if this combination appeals, Barker & Llewelyn are a bit closer analog than Holmes and Watson in more ways than the initially obvious.

What takes this story up another notch or ten is that both Dee and Lao were real historical figures – who never met due to having lived centuries apart. But Lao was a Chinese scholar in London during this period in real life, while Dee was a figure out of legend whose adventures were popularized by Robert van Gulik in the mid-20th century. (So if you think Dee’s name sounds familiar, that’s most likely the reason.)

Of course, what makes any mystery is the way the case itself is laid out and investigated, and that’s where this one draws the reader in its whirlwind every bit as much as Dee pulls Lao along in his wake. Because at first it seems as if the murder was a result of the prejudice and anti-Chinese sentiment that Dee, Lao and their countrymen face on every side in London in 1924, not helped at all by the popular “Yellow Peril” movies that play on and sensationalize the British fear of “the other”.

But the more Dee and Lao, with the able assistance and frequent succor of Dee’s friend Hoong, search for clues and motives, the less that simple but terrible conclusion feels like the entirety of the answer – not that it doesn’t underlay that answer but it’s just not the whole of the thing. Particularly as that answer is made even more elusive by Lao’s struggles with his pride and his naivete, and Dee’s ongoing attempts to extract himself from his opium addiction.

This is a mystery with layers surrounding layers, wheels within wheels, two investigators neither of whom are having their best day and criminals whose overweening pride finally gets in their way. And it’s marvelous.

The audiobook, narrated by Daniel York Loh,  was a delight, but as is so often the case, I switched to text near the end because I couldn’t figure it out either and I just HAD to know. I have two and only two quibbles with the whole thing. I REALLY wanted Lao to get over his mooning over his landlady’s daughter because it was obvious from the beginning that he was deluding himself about his prospects and almost willfully blind to the obvious. His vain hopes and how thoroughly they were going to be dashed took a lot of audio time. My other quibble – a much bigger one – is that the short story that introduced this fascinating pair “The Killing of Henry Davenport” in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine does not appear to be available online, and that there’s no second book firmly fixed on the horizon. Dee’s and Lao’s investigations NEED to be a series. So much. So very much.

Which means that I leave this review pleased that Lao finally let himself get hit with the clue-by-four regarding Miss Wendell, and that rumors of a second book leave me with hope on that front as well.

A+ #BookReview: What Cannot Be Said by C.S. Harris

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: What Cannot Be Said by C.S. HarrisWhat Cannot Be Said (Sebastian St. Cyr, #19) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: regency mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #19
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on April 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A seemingly idyllic summer picnic ends in a macabre murder that echoes a pair of slayings fourteen years earlier in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Who Cries for the Lost.
July 1815: The Prince Regent’s grandiose plans to celebrate Napoléon’s recent defeat at Waterloo are thrown into turmoil when Lady McInnis and her daughter Emma are found brutally murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in a chilling imitation of the stone effigies once found atop medieval tombs. Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy immediately turns to his friend Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, for help with the investigation. For as Devlin discovers, Lovejoy’s own wife and daughter were also murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in the same bizarre postures. A traumatized ex-soldier was hanged for their killings. So is London now confronting a malicious copyist? Or did Lovejoy help send an innocent man to the gallows?
Aided by his wife, Hero, who knew Lady McInnis from her work with poor orphans, Devlin finds himself exploring a host of unsavory characters from a vicious chimney sweep to a smiling but decidedly lethal baby farmer. Also coming under increasing scrutiny is Sir Ivo McInnis himself, along with a wounded Waterloo veteran—who may or may not have been Laura McInnis’s lover—and a charismatic young violinist who moonlights as a fencing master and may have formed a dangerous relationship with Emma. But when Sebastian’s investigation turns toward man about town Basil Rhodes, he quickly draws the fury of the Palace, for Rhodes is well known as the Regent’s favorite illegitimate son.
Then Lady McInnis’s young niece and nephew are targeted by the killer, and two more women are discovered murdered and arranged in similar postures. With his own life increasingly in danger, Sebastian finds himself drawn inexorably toward a conclusion far darker and more horrific than anything he could have imagined.

My Review:

Most readers, myself included, read mysteries for what one author has called “the romance of justice”. What we love about the genre is that no matter how dark the deed, the investigator is able to figure out ‘whodunnit’, justice triumphs and evil receives its just desserts, followed by the reader’s catharsis that order has been restored to the world.

That’s not what happens in this case – because it can’t. This is a case where there can be no justice. Even though the investigator does manage to figure out ‘whodunnit’ there is no catharsis to be had and it would be wrong if there were.

Two bodies are discovered in Richmond Park, a mother and her 16-year-old daughter. That they are cut down in the prime of – or even worse at the beginning of – their lives is unjust enough. Then the situation gets worse.

The bodies are posed in repose, in exactly the same way that the bodies of another mother and daughter were found in that same park, near that same spot, fourteen years previously. It’s the grief over the deaths of his wife and daughter that put Magistrate Henry Lovejoy on the road that led to his first case with Viscount Devlin nearly a decade later, and could be said to have changed both their lives.

Seeing these two bodies – so like his own wife and daughter – make Lovejoy question whether in his zeal to bring SOMEONE to justice all those years ago he pushed for the wrong man’s conviction and execution. In his reinvigorated grief, his crisis of conscience is profound. Yet he still soldiers on in a case that he should have passed on to another Magistrate. Because someone else might get it wrong – as he might have fourteen years ago. He has to see this through – even if – or especially because – he may have apologies owing now, at the end, that won’t begin to redress the damage he caused at the beginning.

Devlin has a crisis of another kind, as the more he delves into this case, both the past tragedy and the present conundrum, the less ANY of it makes sense. The mother had enemies. The daughter had indiscretions. There are plenty of people with motive to kill the mother and even a few who might wish to eliminate the daughter but seemingly no one with this deep an animus for them both – although the husband/father certainly comes closest. As those closest to the victim or victims often do.

It’s only when Devlin sets aside his initial assumptions that logic forces him to reckon with the maxim later attributed to Sherlock Holmes, that “when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In this case, a truth that is so heinous, so previously unthinkable, that no one who confronts it with him can even conceive of a just punishment.

But one desperate man can see – if not justice – at least an ending.

Escape Rating A+: This was, as is usual for my reading in this series, a one-night read that wouldn’t let go of me until it was over. Which doesn’t mean that I’m over it. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, certainly was not at the story’s end.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about this series is the way that even though the murder is always solved, the amount of justice available to be served along with that solution is always limited.

Not that this era didn’t punish its criminals harshly – and as is often shown during the course of the series – unjustly. Rather, it’s that Devlin investigates crimes among the highest and mightiest, and as the saying has always gone, “the rich are different from you and me”.

In other words, Devlin often finds himself in the middle of cases where many of the suspects and even the perpetrators are above the law and protected, as is the case of one suspect here, by someone even higher.

Also, in investigating the dark and dirty underbelly of the glittering Regency, Devlin all too often finds practices that, while perfectly legal, turn both his stomach and ours. As is true in this particular case, as his wife, as well as the murder victim, were pushing hard for reforms in the commonly abused apprentice system – not to mention the vile practice of baby farming – and ruffling plenty of important feathers along their reforming way.

That feather ruffling could have been a motive for one of the murders, but not both. A big part of what keeps the reader turning pages in this one is watching the normally indefatigable and unflappable Devlin flag and flap because the pieces of this puzzle don’t add up – not even badly.

And not that we ALL don’t hope that the husband did it and that Devlin can make THAT stick. Alas, that hope is in vain – which is good for the story in a peculiar way because that would have made things much too easy and considerably less unsettling for both Devlin and the reader.

In the end, this is a story about bringing the unthinkable into thought, and just how much justice is even possible in a case that is indubitably true that absolutely no one will want to believe. Those are hard questions, and they are just as valid in contemporary mystery as they are in this historical iteration.

This series, centered on the riveting character of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, and the equally compelling cast of friends and  enemies – definitely the enemies! – that have gathered around him and his “poking his nose into situations where many believe it does not belong” has had this reader caught in its unshakeable grip since that very first book, What Angels Fear, so very long ago. The fascination hasn’t let go yet, and I don’t expect it to.

What I, maybe not expect but certainly hope for, is yet another page-turning story in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, hopefully this time next year!