Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley

#BookReview: Saving Susy Sweetchild by Barbara Hambly

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Saving Susy Sweetchild by Barbara HamblySaving Susy Sweetchild (Silver Screen Historical Mystery #3) by Barbara Hambly
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Silver Screen Historical Mystery #3
Pages: 293
Published by Severn House on September 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Welcome to Hollywood of the 1920 a world filled with glamour, fake names . . . and the occasional felony!

July, 1924. After nine months of living in Hollywood and working as a companion to her beautiful silent-movie star sister-in-law, young British widow Emma Blackstone is settling into her new doctoring film scenarios whenever the regular scenarist is overwhelmed with work, which seems to be most of the time.

Shoots for the Western movie Our Tiny Miracle are in full swing, with little seven-year-old Susy Sweetchild playing the lead and acting most professionally. Maybe too professionally, Emma thinks, shocked to the core when the child star is nearly killed in a stunt scene and her mother - former screen siren Selina Sutton - seems only to care that Susy gets the job done.

But Emma's concerns only worsen when news reaches her that Susy and her mother have been kidnapped. The ransom note says to keep the cops out of it, so it's up to Emma and Kitty to find them before the unthinkable happens and Emma is forced to rewrite Our Tiny Miracle with a far more tragic ending . . .

New York Times bestselling author Barbara Hambly once again brings the glamour and intrigue of Hollywood to life! An unputdownable mystery for fans of female-fronted historical mysteries set in the roaring twenties.

My Review:

Emma Blackstone, after nearly a year in Hollywood as her sister-in-law’s friend, confidant, dog handler and general factotum, as well as serving as a script doctor for Foremost Studios for almost as long, has learned the way that things work in Hollywood – no matter how often she wishes she didn’t.

Because she sees entirely too much, and is all too aware that she can’t fix ANY of it. Although she certainly does what she can, as shown in the first two books in the Silver Screen Historical Mysteries, Scandal in Babylon and One Extra Corpse.

But Susy Sweetchild’s situation still pierces her straight to the heart. Because the child is clearly – and justifiably – frightened to death. And is just as clearly aware that no one can help her or save her no matter how much they want to.

It’s 1924, and Hollywood is still the ‘Wild West’ when it comes to rules and regulations. Prohibition is in full swing, but bootlegged booze is openly everywhere. OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, won’t exist for another 45 years and child actors like Susy have no rights whatsoever – not even to the money they make.

Especially not to the money they make.

Susy is only seven years old, she’s one of Foremost Pictures biggest moneymakers, and she’s supporting her stage mother, her alcoholic father, her mother’s business manager and her mother’s succession of lovers and THEIR failed businesses as well as her father’s drinking habit. And quite possibly the partridge in the pear tree.

The only person on Susy’s side is her cat Mr. Gray, and poor Mr. Gray is even more of a hostage than she is. If Susy ‘misbehaves’ in any way, Mr. Gray is done for. And Susy is all too aware of the threat.

Possibly so is Mr. Gray. The cat seems both smart and sober, which is more than can be said for a lot of the humans in this story.

Emma would like to rescue Susy, but she has entirely too many hostages to fortune of her own to step that far out of line. She also knows it won’t do any good, as the powers that be in Los Angeles are all too aware of the side on which their bread is buttered, and that the studios are the ones doing the buttering.

But the status quo of Susy’s dreadful situation and anyone’s ability to help her out of it goes from bad to worse when the child star and her mother are kidnapped, along with Mr. Gray – a ginormous clue that should have occurred to more people an awful lot sooner.

Someone is extorting $100,000 from the studio for Susy’s safe return. (That’s something like $18,000,000 in today’s dollars!) There are multiple ransom notes being delivered, quite possibly from multiple sources. The police are not involved in the case, but the gossip columnists and the bootleggers are.

Considering how frequently the adults – including Emma and her Scooby Gang – are misdirected, as reluctant as the studio is to pay all that money to rescue a child star who is rapidly growing out of her cute and winsome phase, it looks like the princess is going to have to rescue herself in this one.

Escape Rating B: There are two stories going on in Saving Susy Sweetchild, and I have to admit that one interested me considerably more than the other.

The first is, of course, the mystery of who kidnapped Susy Sweetchild and whether the poor child can be found before it’s too late. The investigation of Susy’s abduction and ransom is the stuff of which Keystone Cops movies were made. No one covers themselves in glory in this part of the story – either because they are in on it, they intend to exploit its outcome, because they’ve been paid to look the other way or merely because they are simply incompetent but photogenic at the job they’re supposed to do.

Emma at least has a damn good excuse for not catching on right away – she’s not a professional detective, either police or private. It isn’t her job – she just cares about the kid and wants to help her.

But underneath – although often in plain sight – is the glimpse under the glitter and tinsel of Hollywood in the mid-1920s, before the Hays Code crackdown on ‘immorality’, before the talkies, and before the Great Depression.

We still read horrific stories about the treatment of child actors in Hollywood, and a lot of those stories are terrible to children and other living creatures. Susy will probably remind a lot of people of Shirley Temple, but by Temple’s time 15 years later, the situation had actually gotten a bit better. For select versions of ‘better’. Maybe less awful.

One of Susy Sweetchild’s contemporaries would have been another child actor named Jackie Coogan – who might be more familiar to readers as Uncle Fester in the 1960s Addams Family TV series. His relevance to Susy Sweetchild is that It was his lawsuit against his own mother in 1938, after he turned 21 and discovered that his mother had squandered his entire fortune, that finally put laws in place about the treatment of child actors AND the provision to put a portion of their income in trust for their adulthood.

All of the above tells readers that as much as I was following Susy’s fictional case, it was the factual underpinnings that truly had my attention for much of the story. The split in my attention wasn’t great for my absorption in Susy’s actual story, but the research dive was a lot of fun.

Howsomever, I did love the ending of Susy’s story. She was pretty much the only person who deserved a happy ending, and I was very relieved to see that she – and Mr. Gray – got exactly what they deserved – as did a whole lot of others who deserved something considerably less…happy.

A- #BookReview: Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. WiseOut of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: fantasy mystery, horror, mystery, science fiction mystery
Pages: 176
Published by Titan Books on September 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In the distant future, when mortals mingle with the gods in deep space, an out-of-date automaton, a recovering addict, and an angel race to solve the Pope’s murder in an abandoned corner of the galaxy.
Scribe IV is an obsolete automaton, peacefully whiling away his years on the Bastion, a secluded monastery in an abandoned corner of the galaxy. But when the visiting Pope is found murdered, Scribe IV knows he has very little time before the terrifying Sisters of the Drowned Deep rise up to punish the Bastion’s residents for their crime.
Quin, a recovering drug addict turned private investigator, picks up a scrambled signal from the Bastion and agrees to take the case. Traumatized by a bizarre experience in his childhood, Quin repeatedly feeds his memories to his lover, the angel Murmuration. But fragmented glimpses of an otherworldly horror he calls the crawling dark continue to haunt his dreams.
Meanwhile in Heaven, an angel named Angel hears Scribe IV’s prayer. Intrigued by the idea of solving a crime with mortals, xe descends to offer xer divine assistance (whether those mortals want it or not). With the Drowned Sisters closing in around the Bastion, Scribe IV, Quin, and Angel race to find out who really murdered the Pope, and why. Quin’s missing memories may hold the key to the case—but is remembering worth the price?
Haunting, dreamy and beautifully written, Out of the Drowning Deep is perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Martha Wells, and This Is How You Lose the Time War.

My Review:

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting with this one – but I’m certainly that I wasn’t expecting the ginormous size of the book blender that would be needed to encompass the many, many, many bookish influences that I caught glimpses of along its merely – I say again – MERELY 176 pages of mysterious, fantastical, science fictional surprises, delights and horrors.

Definitely the horrors. This is one of those cases where judging the book at least a bit by its cover is utterly justified. Because Out of the Drowning Deep absolutely does go to some truly creepy places – and that cover doesn’t just merely reflect that fact but stares it down with myriad, haunting and haunted, eyes.

We start with a mystery. In this far-future universe, in an ancient monastery long decayed from its glory days, the visiting Pope has just been murdered.

Scribe IV, the AI-driven “automaton” in charge of “The Bastion” is already regretting his wish for a bit of mystery in his routine existence. The mystery that has just fallen at his feet has the potential to bring about the end of the home and sanctuary of every member of the Bastion’s remaining staff, including himself.

It might also mean the literal end of all of them AND as well as the place itself, as it seems that Scribe IV’s acknowledgement of the identity of the body has triggered an immediate response from the dreaded Drowned Sisters.

As if their name wasn’t ominous enough, the Sisters have the power to lock down the Bastion, take over the investigation of the Pope’s death, and act as judge, jury and executioner on the whole tragic and/or terrible mess.

The Sisters are not known for their mercy. They are however known for their headlong rush to punitive judgment and the swiftness of their actions tells Scribe that they have passed that judgment long before the murder took place – to the point where they might have been instrumental in it or were merely waiting in the depths to pounce on any conceivable opening to swoop down upon the Bastion and Drown the old temple with its population still inside.

Scribe has one hope – and yes, the automaton has taken on the possibility of hope, and even prayer, along with a host of other human characteristics over the years of his service transcribing prayers and serving as majordomo of the Bastion.

He managed to get an SOS out before the Sisters locked the Bastion down. Scribe called for any independent investigator to answer his call. And he was answered by not one but two investigators; a man with his own terrible experiences of gods, monsters and the creatures who exist between the two, and an angel who the Sisters may not believe in but whom they also cannot control.

Even if this whole sordid mess is part of their attempt to control someone even more powerful – the god they claim to serve.

Escape Rating A-: About that gigantic book blender I mentioned earlier… This was a book that persisted in making me think of other books although I still got completely wrapped up in the story that it was telling. Then again, I really do love the current run of SF and Fantasy mysteries and this is absolutely part of that wave – pardon the pun.

So the overarching vehicle for this is solving that mystery, the who and how and why of the dead Pope lying on the Bastion’s floor. (Whether the Pope in this far-flung future is a direct spiritual or organizational descendant of the current Pope isn’t detailed and doesn’t need to be.)

Which led directly to one of the books this one reminded me of, albeit in opposition, and that was Lavie Tidhar’s short story “The Old Dispensation” in the recent New Adventures in Space Opera collection. Because that story, which also dealt with terrible acts of a far-future religious organization, used entirely Jewish references for its religious iconography and the unadorned, unexplained use of ‘The Pope’ as a person of religious authority was a reminder that Christian-styled reference in both SF and Fantasy can pass without definition or explanation.

Scribe’s desire to investigate the mystery and find the truth instead of swallowing the uncomfortable lie that he knows the Sisters are about to proclaim struck sparks of the independent investigative journalist AI Scorn from Aimee Ogden’s Emergent Properties.

The truth of this universe relies on a bit of the premise that underscores American Gods, that man makes actual gods in his own image and can literally make himself into one under the right conditions. This particular chain of thought also looped in a bit of Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead.

But the two books that I felt most keenly related to Out of the Drowning Deep were, on the one hand, We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart and The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison.

Those are two books that probably shouldn’t have anything to do with one another – and yet they are blended together in Out of the Drowning Deep.

Like We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep, Out of the Drowning Deep (and yes, the similarity of the titles does echo more than a bit) there’s that shifting foundation of the way that the isolated religious worshippers – the Sisters here and the Brothers there and I just picked up that bit of irony – have wrenched their original worship of their deity and their service to its commandments into an even darker message that they intend to inflict on their world at any cost and by any means necessary. Once they served their gods faithfully – now they intend their gods to serve them.

As dark as that part of the story is, and as often as Angels appear in fantasy and even SF as overbearing, overzealous, self-righteous destroyers, in Out of the Drowning Deep, while that’s the reputation the Angels certainly have, that’s not all that they are, and that’s absolutely not who the two Angels who become involved in this mystery, Murmuration and especially the investigating angel who befriends Scribe, the one who calls xemself just Angel, both feel more human and take on more human characteristics, both good and bad, than Scribe initially expects, much like in The Angel of the Crows.

Which leads the automaton Scribe IV, who has taken on more human attributes than he likes to admit to, to consider the possibility of a much different future, a future of his own choosing, than he ever imagined possible. With a friend he never expected at all.

There’s more here. In fact, there’s lots more here. For a novella, Out of the Drowning Deep went to a lot of fascinating and surprising places, and I was as delighted to go there with Scribe IV as I was creeped out by all those eyes.

#BookReview: The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: The Ghost Cat by Alex HowardThe Ghost Cat by Alex Howard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cat stories, cozy fantasy, historical fantasy, historical fiction, magical realism
Pages: 272
Published by Hanover Square Press on August 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A charming novel for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and How to Stop Time , following a cat through his nine lives in Edinburgh, moving through the ever-changing city and its inhabitants over centuries
Early morning, 1902. At 7/7 Marchmont Crescent, Eilidh the charlady tips coal into a fire grate and sets it alight. Overhearing, Grimalkin the cat ambles over to curl up against the welcome heat and lick his favorite human's hand. But this is to be his last day on earth…before he becomes the Ghost Cat.
Follow Grimalkin as he witnesses the changes of the next 120 years, prowling unseen among the inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement while unearthing some startling revelations about the mystery of existence, the unstoppable march of time and the true meaning of feline companionship.

My Review:

Grimalkin is dead, to begin with. (The opening line to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a gift that just keeps on giving.)

Grimalkin is a house cat, in fact THE house cat, at 7/7 Marchmont Crescent, born in 1887 and dead at the rather battered age of 15 in 1902. The thing about Grimalkin’s death that makes the story work is that the cat gods, in the person of Cat-Sìth who comes to visit Grimalkin upon the occasion of his death have to admit that they’ve fallen down on the job. As a cat, his spirit if not his body is entitled to nine lives, and he’s been shorted out of eight of them.

Something must be done in redress.

Grimalkin is given a choice even if the full measure of it isn’t clear to him at the time. He can go to his eternal sleep – or – he can have his eight remaining lives as a ghost cat. He’ll be able to experience the world, but generally not affect it – at least until his final three lives. He’ll be granted two more lives to ‘stay’ as he did in his first, corporeal life, three lives to ‘stray’ and three lives to ‘play’ as a poltergeist.

He’ll get to see how his human, Eilidh, is doing even if he won’t be able to actually be with her. He’ll get to see how the place he lived is getting on over the years. He’ll experience a bit of the world as it changes. But only for one day in each life.

His body will no longer feel pain, and he’ll be incapable of being harmed. But harm to the body isn’t half as painful as harm to the heart and the soul. There will be times when the world will have moved too fast for him to cope with. There will be occasions that will break his heart. There will be times when he’ll want to give up and go to his final, eternal catnap right meow.

But he’ll also have a few opportunities to change the world – not in a big way – but in small and important ways to make sure that a person or two gets EXACTLY what they deserve. Whether what they deserve is salvation – or damnation.

In Grimalkin’s case, the old saying proves to be absolutely true. “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”

Escape Rating B: First, let me admit the obvious. I’ve been picking a lot of books with cats recently because I miss Lucifer something fierce. Each person deals with their emotions in different ways – for me it’s books.

(The above comment does not apply to Junkyard Roadhouse. I’ve been following that series for four years now and would have grabbed that audiobook the minute it arrived no matter when it came. The series is totally awesome. Review coming later this week.)

Pivoting from my digression, I also have to say that I’m glad I read this AFTER the trip to Glasgow and not before – even though this is set in Edinburgh. There are a few things – like the ubiquitous presence of IRN BRU – that just had a bit more immediacy and resonance after such a recent trip to Scotland – and Britain more generally – than they would have before.

As a story, The Ghost Cat feels like a timeslip story mixed with quite a bit of magical realism as well as a touch of the musical Cats and just a hint of the cat wizards in Diane Duane’s The Book of Night with Moon.

I loved Grimalkin as a character, even though his particular existence conflicted with the laws of the universe in ways that are detailed in the rather long Reviewer’s Note at the end. Grimalkin the cat displays the feelings that we all hope that our companion animals have for us, specifically that he has chosen his person and loves her unconditionally. His primary motivation for accepting the option of ghost lives is to follow her through the years – not understanding the heartbreak that will inevitably follow.

What makes him interesting to follow is the way that he dips into time – rather like Brigadoon – but at much shorter intervals. He gets to see just a bit of the changes in the world, and it’s particularly poignant that he is present for both Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation AND the announcement of her passing. Also a tad ironic, as at her coronation he assures himself that she’ll be just a ‘flash in the pan’ compared to the eternal Victoria who was Queen for his entire life – and of course he’s so very wrong about that.

But right about many other things – not so much about eras and the increasing pace of life and what appears to be its equally increasing lack of civility and manners – but rather about his insights into the hearts of people. Human nature, for good or ill, doesn’t change all that much over a mere century or so.

In the end, Grimalkin’s story is a lovely little collection of observations and snippets, grounded in a bit of the author’s life, however fictionalized – and with additional magic. It’s a charming slip through the high points of a century, as seen through the often floor-level eyes of one very intelligent – but ultimately soul-weary – cat.

If, like this reader, you’re looking for a story that will reassure your heart and soul that the cats who leave us behind love us even from the Rainbow Bridge or wherever it is they go next, Grimalkin’s story may also serve as a bit of a balm to a wounded heart.

Reviewer’s (REALLY LONG) Note on feline genetics as applied to Grimalkin, the tl;dr version of which is that Grimalkin is genetically impossible and the story didn’t cover that over with even a bit of handwavium.

The ‘ghost cat’ of the title, Grimalkin, is very explicitly described as a rather prolifically reproductive tortoiseshell tomcat – and that is an actual, honest-to-goodness contradiction in terms. Due to the peculiarities of feline genetics as they apply to coat color and gender, tortoiseshell and calico cats are nearly always female. It is possible, but very rare for a male tortie or calico to be born – only a 1 in 3,000 or .033% chance. (That’s not 33% or 3%, that’s 3 one hundredths of one percent. In other words, the chance exists but it’s TINY.) And due to the genetic anomalies that allow this to happen, male tortoiseshell and calico cats are always sterile.

Now and very much on the other hand, the book of The Ghost Cat definitely falls into the category of magical realism – meaning that magic could make Grimalkin exactly what he is in the story. In the Victorian Era, when Grimalkin was born, science and the ‘Cat Fancy’ hadn’t yet figured much if any of this out, although detailed observation would have led to a conclusion that male torties were rare indeed. Howsomever, the cat gods or deities or powers-that-be or whatever that magic black cat with the white heart marking was could easily have known just how special Grimalkin was and commented upon it – as that cat spirit did so many other things. A mention would have taken care of the incongruity and kept it from tripping me – and probably other readers who are even slightly familiar with cat genetics – out of the story every time Grimalkin’s appearance was detailed.

I understand completely the desire for Grimalkin to possess both a tomcat’s machismo AND a heaping helping of tortitude, I just needed a bit of handwavium (or plot armor) to get there that wasn’t present in the story.

Your reading mileage, or percentage in this case, as always, may vary.

#BookReview: Memories of the Lost by Barbara O’Neal

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: Memories of the Lost by Barbara O’NealMemories of the Lost by Barbara O'Neal
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: magical realism, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 285
Published by Lake Union Publishing on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An unsuspecting artist uncovers her late mother’s secrets and unravels her own hidden past in a beguiling novel by the USA Today bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids.
Months after her mother passes away, artist Tillie Morrisey sees a painting in a gallery that leaves her inexplicably lightheaded and unsteady. When a handsome stranger comes to her aid, their connection is so immediate it seems fated, though Liam is only visiting for a few days.
Working on her own art has always been a refuge, but after discovering a document among her mother’s belongings that suggests Tillie’s life has been a lie, she begins to suffer from a series of fugue states, with memories surfacing that she isn’t even sure are her own. As her confusion and grief mount, and prompted by a lead on the painting that started it all, Tillie heads to a seaside village in England. There, she hopes to discover the source of her uncanny inspirations, sort out her feelings about Liam, and unravel truths that her mother kept hidden for decades.
The fluidity of memory, empowering strength of character, beauty of nature, and love of family braid together in this artful tapestry of a novel.

My Review:

Who is Tillie Morrisey?

That question is at the heart of this story, as Tillie discovers that the only true things that she can be sure of are the ones that she has accomplished for herself. She is a successful artist, living in New York City, preparing for her next show.

Those things are real and true, no matter what else happens – or has already.

Because discovering that the rest of the things she believed were true – about her mother, their lack of family, the isolation of Tillie’s childhood, even Tille’s name and family history, are hidden behind a tissue of lies that Tillie had no idea lurked inside her memories.

Which she can’t trust at all.

Inside Tillie’s fractured mental landscape is something a lot like ‘Pandora’s Box’ – with all the implications that name invokes about what is released and what lurks within. The key to Tillie’s version of that box turns out to be an old newspaper clipping hidden away in her recently deceased mother’s house. The clipping holds the story of a long ago tragedy. That her mother didn’t reveal all the details of something that happened before Tillie was born isn’t really a surprise – but the other document that she finds certainly is.

Because Tillie’s birth certificate is right there in the same set of boxes. But it’s not exactly Tillie’s, because that Tillie – that other Tillie – would have been three years older than artist Tillie. And the other Tillie died in that long ago tragedy.

Present-day Tillie, adult Tillie, doesn’t know if the girl that died was her sister, if her mother named the both the same for ‘reasons’ or if there is more to unravel than Tillie ever knew.

That this revelation comes at a point in Tillie’s life where she herself is unraveling, as she realizes that she’s painting wild cats while is in so deep a fugue state that she loses time and doesn’t remember the work – and a point when she’s fallen deeply into a long-distance relationship – may be enough to finally release the memories she’s blocked – and lost.

Or she may just lose herself.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this up because I’ve enjoyed several of the author’s previous works, particularly Write My Name Across the Sky and This Place of Wonder. I was hoping for more of the same and almost, but not quite, got it.

It seems like all of the author’s work circles around a group of people whose past suddenly crashes headlong into the present – and how they deal with that crash.

In this particular case, it’s Tillie’s past, the past her mother withheld from her – a withholding that started early enough (Tillie was FOUR) and was pervasive enough that Tillie repressed any memories that she might have had.

What’s happening in this story is that those repressed memories are now breaking through and manifesting as migraines (YUCK and UGH), painting in fugue and generally knocking on the door in Tillie’s memory any way they can.

That this all started happening just a few months after her mother Arletta’s death can’t possibly be a coincidence – and it isn’t.

Although Tillie’s brand new romance possibly is one. Or it may be karma or fate trying to put things back on course in ways that initially seem like tangents or distractions but finally do reach the heart of the matter.

From whence comes to the reasons that I liked this book but didn’t love it quite as much as I hoped I would.

Because this story operates on three tracks. Of course, there’s Tillie’s perspective, and then there’s her new love, Liam’s point of view. I liked them, I liked their story, I understood their doubts and fears even as they kept moving forwards into a future they couldn’t quite see yet.

But there was a third track to the story that felt like an interruption to the thing as a whole. It does eventually connect up – and that connection is SO important and part of the resolution of Tillie’s quest. Howsomever, as it was happening, as the focus switched from Tillie and Liam to this other thread it dropped me out of the story to the point where I was wondering if there was going to be a portal fantasy element along with the touch of magical realism throughout the story. (There’s no portal, but I seriously wondered for quite a while.)

So, if that third angle drives you a bit up the wall, stick with it, because the story as a whole turned out to be lovely, even as it walks Tillie – and Liam – through some surprisingly dark places along the way to their well-deserved happy ever after.

TLC

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Monday, August 26th: @beckys_bookshelves and Becky’s Bookshelves

A- #BookReview: The Naturalist’s Daughter by Tea Cooper

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Naturalist’s Daughter by Tea CooperThe Naturalist's Daughter by Tea Cooper
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Pages: 368
Published by Harper Muse on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

1808 Agnes Banks, NSW
Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. Not only does she love him with all her heart, but the discoveries they have made could turn the scientific world on its head. When Charles is unable to make the long sea journey to present his findings to the prestigious Royal Society in England, Rosie must venture forth in his stead. What she discovers there will change the lives of future generations.
1908 Sydney, NSW
Tamsin Alleyn has been given a mission: travel to the Hunter Valley and retrieve an old sketchbook of debatable value, gifted to the Public Library by a recluse. But when she gets there, she finds there is more to the book than meets the eye, and more than one interested party. Shaw Everdene, a young antiquarian bookseller and lawyer seems to have his own agenda when it comes to the book – and Tamsin. In an attempt to discover the book's true provenance Tamsin decides to work with him.
The deeper they delve, the more intricate the mystery becomes. As the lives of two women a century apart converge, discoveries rise up from the past and reach into the future, with irrevocable consequences...

My Review:

There have been plenty of hoax animals and artifacts in the histories of archaeological and biological discoveries. But the platypus was not one of them – no matter how skeptical scientists initially were about the creature found – and only found – on the wet eastern riverlands of Australia.

But it’s easy to understand why scientists in Britain, presented with a preserved specimen of an animal that had fur like a mammal, a bill like a duck, a poison spur like a reptile, that laid eggs like a bird but nursed its young as mammals do treated the specimen with a HUGE dose of skepticism.

Even the platypus’ early scientific name, ornithorhynchus paradoxus – paradoxical bird-snout – makes the confusion of all who observed the animal exceedingly clear.

This illustration by Frederick Polydore Nodder is the first published illustration of a platypus. It accompanied George Shaw’s 1799 description of the animal in the Naturalist’s Miscellany, or Coloured figures of natural objects”. London:Nodder & Co.

The story in The Naturalist’s Daughter is wrapped tightly around the paradox of the platypus, both its discovery across two centuries – about the history of its first introduction to the preeminent 19th century naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and then the early 20th century discovery that perhaps the attribution for that first discovery had been misplaced in the midst of a series of tragic family secrets and devastating lies.

It’s a story that goes full circle, from young Rose Winton, a budding naturalist in her own right – or at least she would have been if she had been born either male or in a later century – and the origin story that had been hidden from her – to Tamsin Alleyn a century later, an independent young woman determined to chart her own course – a course that leads her back to a family and a history she never knew was hers.

Along the way, the story of the platypus spurs its poison and lays its eggs, from the manipulations of a wealthy family that abused, transported, lied and cheated Rose’ mother to descendants that hid her heritage and did their damndest to do it all again.

Only for the truth, at last, to make so many injustices finally come ‘round right and correct the mistakes of history in a story that combines the thrill of scientific discovery with the sins of avarice, the desperation to escape not one but two legacies that are too difficult to bear and a romance weighed down with secrets on all sides.

Escape Rating A-: Before I get to the story, I have to say that to this reader, at least, the original Australian cover (pictured at left) does a much better job of conveying the heart of this story – which lies in the land that gave birth to the platypus – than the US cover. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, etc., etc., etc., but the well-dressed somewhat generic figure on the US cover doesn’t ring true for either Rose or Tamsin – but the land and its creatures are definitely the heart of the thing.

The Naturalist’s Daughter, like several of the author’s other works, is a dual timeline story. In the 1808 timeline, we have Rose Winton, the titular naturalist’s daughter, as her father teaches her his craft even though she has no chance of being a professional or respected scientist. When he is struck down, she finds herself taking up as much of his mantle as the society of the time will allow.

In the 1908 portion of the story, we have Tamsin Alleyn, a young librarian and archivist who has come into contact with a sketchbook that once belonged to Charles Winton. A sketchbook of somewhat mysterious provenance – and an even more uncertain fate – that contains some sketches that the reader is already aware were drawn by Rose and not her father.

For much of the story, it seems that the sketchbook is the connecting link, but as Tamsin continues to investigate the path that the sketchbook has taken through the intervening century, it becomes clear that there is more to connect the two women than it first seemed.

Readers may find one or the other character easier to empathize with. Rose faces more danger, but Tamsin has more freedom of action. Rose is closer to the beginning of the mystery, but Tamsin is the agent who uncovers the whole of it.

Personally I found Tamsin’s story the more satisfying approach, but Rose’s story certainly has its own appeal.

The way that the two stories turn out to be the same story after all turned into a fascinating web built out of secrets and lies, told by multiple less than reliable narrators, which made it that much more fascinating and difficult to suss out the truth before the final – and imminently satisfying – conclusion.

#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi OkoraforShe Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, science fantasy, science fiction
Series: She Who Knows #1
Pages: 176
Published by DAW on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, Firespitter is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy
When there is a call, there is often a response.
Najeeba knows.
She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.
Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

My Review:

The story begins, as so many of this author’s stories do, with a young African woman on the cusp of change in a world that has already changed and been changed from the one we know now.

In the case of this particular story and this particular young woman and this particular version of the future, Najeeba is thirteen when the story begins, and is about to go on a journey. A journey that members of her family take every year – but a journey that females are not supposed to undertake at all.

Not that there are laws against it, but there are rules – rules enforced by a social contract that have ossified into restrictions that no one challenges. Not until Najeeba comes in and tells her parents that she feels the call of the ancestral salt road every bit as much – if not a bit more and a bit sooner – than her father and her brothers.

In the desert, salt is life. Finding the best salt, the purest AND prettiest blocks of it, and selling them for the best price in distant markets, keeps her family and her village alive and prosperous. Most of the time.

Because her people have historically been considered unclean, untouchable outcasts. A judgment that Najeeba’s inclusion in the annual salt harvest is guaranteed to make worse AND more violent – even as it confers upon Najeeba the kind of power that is guaranteed to bring down retribution – both human and divine.

And gives birth, literally and figuratively, to a woman who will change the world.

Escape Rating B+: She Who Knows is the first book in a prequel trilogy of novellas to the author’s award-winning novel Who Fears Death. In a way that story literally gives birth to this one as this one gives birth to that, as Najeeba, “she who knows”, is the mother of Onyesonwu, “who fears death”.

I haven’t read Who Fears Death, although I have a copy in both text and audio and plan to listen to it. While it has certainly climbed up the virtually towering TBR pile after finishing She Who Knows, I don’t feel like I missed anything by reading this book first. After all, it IS a prequel and not a sequel. It sets the stage for Who Fears Death without giving anything away or providing spoilers.

What it does remind me of, a lot, is the author’s Desert Magician’s Duology, particularly Shadow Speaker. Not only do Najeeba’s and Eiji’s stories start from a similar place, as both begin their stories as girls on the cusp of womanhood, gifted or cursed (depending on one’s perspective) with magical powers, but both choose difficult paths that their birth cultures reserve for men and they also find themselves telling – and being told – their stories by and to strange desert sorcerers.

They are not products of the same Afrocentric future world, but their worlds are similar nonetheless. Meaning that if you like one, or if you have enjoyed ANY of the author’s previous and/or successive works such as the Binti Trilogy, there’s a very good chance you’ll fall right into She Who Knows as well.

In the end – and also as a beginning – this is a great introduction to Who Fears Death AND The Book of Phoenix, which is a much earlier prequel chronologically to Onye’s story. Not only is this a great story in its own right, but it’s also short which means that it provides an introduction in an easily consumed little package. And if that consumption leaves you with a taste for more – as it very much did this reader – this is, oh-so-thankfully, the first novella in the projected trilogy of equally short and undoubtedly equally salty and delicious stories.

I am definitely looking forward to the rest of Najeeba’s story, which will be continued in next year’s One Way Witch. In the meantime I can’t wait to see how the mother’s experiences in this book and the rest of the trilogy are reflected in the child in Who Fears Death.

 

A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth RevisFull Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Chaotic Orbits #1
Pages: 192
Published by DAW on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A high octane sexy space heist from New York Times-bestselling author Beth Revis, the first in a novella trilogy.
Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission.
But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong—but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her—at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker—and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating who until it’s too late…
A phenomenally fun novella that kicks off a trilogy of sexy space heists and romantic tension, Full Speed to a Crash Landing is packed with great characters and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end.

My Review:

It’s pretty clear – at least to the reader – from the opening pages of Full Speed to a Crash Landing that Ada Lamarr’s ‘Mayday’ isn’t exactly on the up and up. Even if her little spaceship does have a real, honest-to-larceny hole blown in its side – taking her airlock not merely offline but blown out into little bitsies in the surrounding black of space.

That hole is unequivocally real and true – although every other single thing about Ada’s story sounds like a fake and a lie – even the parts that aren’t either of those things. The government agent in charge of the Halifax, the much bigger and better funded ship that has dawdled to her rescue is certain that Ada has got something going on on the down low that necessitated her ship’s presence in this particular sector in orbit over this particular tectonically active (extremely active) baby planet.

He’s sure that both Ada and his ship are after the same quarry, the cargo ship that crash landed, very badly and in multiple pieces, on that earthquake-ridden and volcano prone little planetoid.

Agent Rian White knows what his crew is after, but he’s less than certain about Ada’s stake in this particular game. Only that he’s absolutely positive that she has one.

But he’s so bewitched, bothered and bewildered by the seemingly open but utterly devious smuggler that he doesn’t figure out that she’s already stolen everything she planned on until after she warps away with the contents of a much-sought-after and destructively secured datadrive, the key to opening it – and, quite possibly, his heart.

Unfortunately for Ada, she’s all too aware that he has hers – and that it’s the one thing she never expected to lose – let alone to a government agent who is too good and too good-looking for his own – or certainly her own – good.

Escape Rating A-: This one is pure, sheer, unadulterated fun. It just hits on so many levels in a way that keeps both the reader and the characters delightfully guessing every step of the way. Because we know from the beginning that Ada Lamarr is, as that old saying goes, no better than she ought to be. We know she’s an unreliable narrator because she teases us – along with government agent Rian White, with her secrets and plans and wheels-within-wheels plot even as she’s running out of oxygen and wondering if perhaps she went just a bit too far with her opening gambit.

At least until it works – and gives her one up on the stick up her ass captain of the Halifax. Who is NOT really in charge and is absolutely not Rian White – whose ass is delectable and absolutely does not have a stick up it. (And I’ll leave the rest of the possible salacious jokes and puns right here no matter how tempting they are. Ada has several thoughts in that direction but absolutely does not go there in this first book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy – no matter how much she wants to.)

On the surface, this is very much a wheels-within-wheels long game kind of caper plot. Ada clearly has a hidden agenda from the off – even if she doesn’t reveal the full extent of it even inside the privacy of her own head. Rian sees the wheels spinning, even if he can’t see what they’re spinning around and about, Ada sees his wheels spinning and is attracted by his obvious intelligence. They’re both clearly playing with each other on multiple levels and that’s already fun.

Which gives the story a bit of lightness that brightens the world creation – because it’s equally clear that the way this particular SF world is set up is not all that light. And it’s a bit murky, at least at this early stage, whether Ada is on the side of the angels or on the side of the biggest paycheck. She’s undoubtedly morally gray, but one of the questions that we’re left with at the end is whether Rian White is even grayer, or not.

That the grayness revolves around a very interesting question adds a bit of depth to that world creation. Because this isn’t a case where the established government is evil in one way or another, the question is whether or not it can possibly be effective at fixing what’s been broken. Not a question of whether or not it’s on the side of the angels, but whether or not it has enough angels on its side to get the shit that needs to get done, done.

Between the caper aspects, the questions about which side is the righteous one in a universe going mad, and the possibility of romance – or at least eventual sexytimes – between its deceitful heroine and its play-mostly-by-the-rules hero, Full Speed to a Crash Landing fits right into the marvelous moment that science fiction romance is currently having.

So if you’ve fallen hard for Valerie Valdes’ Chilling Effect, Rachel Bach’s Fortune’s Pawn, Cat Rambo’s You Sexy Thing and/or Constance Fay’s marvelous Fiasco and Calamity, you’ll be as pleased as I am to know that the second book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy, How to Steal a Galaxy, will be speeding our way in December. Rian White will be staking out an auction hoping it will attract Ada – while Ada plans to convince him to join her on the dark side – where the cookies are – by kidnapping him into her own questionably legal plans.

It should be a BLAST!

#BookReview: Where is Anybody? by Simon R. Green

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Where is Anybody? by Simon R. GreenWhere is Anybody? (Gideon Sable, #5) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Gideon Sable #5
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Legendary master thief and conman Gideon Sable must pull off an impossible heist to save his partner's life in this fast-paced supernatural thriller from New York Times bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green

Gideon Sable specializes in stealing the kind of things that can't usually be stolen. But these days the legendary master thief is officially retired from the caper game. Now, instead of pulling off elaborate heists with his crew of supernatural specialists, he runs a magical shop in the heart of London with his partner Annie Anybody. Still, he can't resist occasionally going out in the night to steal things when Annie's not looking. For old times' sake - and for the joy of the con.

But after one of his late-night illicit jaunts, Gideon returns to the shop to find that while he's been stealing, someone else has been hard at work . . . stealing from him. I have taken Annie Anybody, reads the note on the countertop. If you ever want to see her again, you must find and steal Time's Arrow. You have forty-eight hours.

Stealing the legendary Arrow isn't a challenge; it's certain death. But Gideon will stop at nothing to save Annie from their unknown enemy - with or without the help of his talented, terrifying former crew . . .

My Review:

Gideon Sable is a lot of things – thief, rogue, collector, jack of all slightly nefarious trades and a master of several of them – more than he admits but then he likes to be underestimated. It’s all part of the game, after all.

But he’s been trying to go straight – or as straight as anyone can who operates in Old Soho – after the events of Not of This World. But it’s not working for him. He misses the thrill of the hunt – and the curiosities and oddities store he inherited always needs more stock.

He may have sorta/kinda convinced himself that’s that’s enough to justify all of his occasional illegal forays into other people’s collections  – particularly as he only steals from people – and creatures – who really, really deserve it. But his partner, Annie Anybody, can always see right through him.

She always wears someone else’s face, so it’s easy for her to spot that her partner is wearing a mask of contentment that doesn’t quite fit. Gideon may always be ‘the man with a plan’ but this time Annie has a plan of her very own – and it’s much, much better than Gideon’s.

All he has to do is get the old gang back together – or at least as together as some of them can ever be – and ride to Annie’s rescue. Because Annie’s been kidnapped by one of Gideon’s many, many old enemies – and he’ll do anything to get her back. No matter how many impossibly well-guarded collections he has to burgle to save the love of his life.

But no plan – not even Gideon’s – survives first contact, especially when that enemy already knows all of Gideon’s tricks. As Annie’s kidnapper most definitely and absolutely does.

Escape Rating B: If the TV series Leverage had a book baby with the author’s own Nightside series the result would be Gideon Sable. Gideon is a liar, a thief, and a con artist, much like Nate Ford in Leverage – who is also ‘a man with a plan’. But Gideon, even though he usually operates outside the law and against the powers that be, only operates against villains who are much worse than he has any intention of ever being – even if those he considers fair game often represent that law OR are themselves among the powers-that-be. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Gideon Sable is right there waiting for some of them to step over a line that sometimes only he can see.

But he’s not really Gideon Sable. Or rather he IS Sable now but he hasn’t always been. In Old Soho, the mask and moniker of Gideon Sable belongs to whoever can steal it and keep it. In the first book in the series, The Best Thing You Can Steal, he had just assumed that identity – whoever he used to be.

This story, which looks like the final book in the series, reads like a bit of a victory lap for the character – in spite of his desperation to save Annie and enact some serious justice on whoever took her from him.

Along the way, first he has to get the old gang back together – and every single one of them needs help before they are available to help him. Even old friends and enemies manage to pop onstage for a brief moment and fans of the series will enjoy seeing most of them again – even the ones that Gideon himself would prefer to drop into a pit lined with spikes or vipers or both.

One of the things that has made this series work for me is that Gideon is a stream-of-consciousness snarkmaster of the first order and we see everything from inside his wry, cynical, sarcastic head. If you like his voice, you’ll enjoy the series – and probably most of the author’s other series – because the style is the same throughout and his worlds tend to bleed into one another – often literally.

Just don’t attempt to start here. It would be like reading the last chapter of a book before the first – before anything that’s going on in the ending has enough backstory to make sense. But all the books in the series are just barely above novella length, so if you like a lot of sass and snark in your protagonists then Gideon Sable might be your jam.

It certainly has been mine, and I’m sad that this series seems to be ending. At least I still have a few of his Ishmael Jones series left to read for when I next need some high quality snarcasm!

A- #BookReview: The Mummy of Mayfair by Jeri Westerson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Mummy of Mayfair by Jeri WestersonThe Mummy of Mayfair (An Irregular Detective Mystery #2) by Jeri Westerson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Irregular Detective #2
Pages: 224
Published by Severn House on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Private investigators Timothy Badger and Benjamin Watson take on another unusual and baffling case in Victorian London when a mummy unwrapping party takes a chilling turn.London, 1895. Although their last high profile case was a huge success, private detectives Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson know they can't afford to turn down any work, despite financial assistance from their mentor, Sherlock Holmes.So when the eminent Doctor Enock Sawyer of St Bart's Hospital asks Badger if the duo will provide security for a mummy unwrapping party he is hosting, Badger doesn't hesitate to take the job. After all, how hard can guarding the doctor's bizarre Egyptian artefacts be? But with Doctor Sawyer running late for his own party, the 'genuine' ancient sarcophagus of Runihura Saa is unravelled to reveal the remains of . . . Doctor Sawyer! Suddenly, the pair are drawn into a new case that's stranger and twister than they could ever have imagined.

My Review:

The “irregularity” of the Irregular Detective series is in the person of one of its protagonists, Timothy Badger of the Badger and Watson Detecting Agency. Once upon a time, Badger was one of the “invisible” children who operated as Sherlock Holmes’ eyes and ears on the streets of Victorian London. In other words, Tim Badger was one of Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars.

But when Badger aged out – or grew up – out of the Irregulars, he still needed to make his living. Which is where his partner, jack-of-all-trades Benjamin Watson comes into the picture. Both from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the East End, without a shilling between them, they set up as private detectives in the mode of Badger’s former ‘Guv’, the Great Detective himself.

As seen in the first entry in this series, The Isolated Séance, after five years of struggle to keep body and soul together, Sherlock Holmes himself gave these ‘apprentices’ a bit of a leg up. Their perseverance was rewarded with rooms in Soho – several steps up the economic ladder from their previous lodgings and office – and a seemingly magical refilling box of money for expenses.

They’re doing well for themselves. It’s a lot of hard work and shoe leather – but their successes seem to outnumber their failures. They have as much work as they can handle – and even their own chronicler in the person of newspaper reporter Ellsie Littleton.

Which leads to this second sensational case, The Mummy of Mayfair. A moniker that seems ripped, not from the headlines, but from the titles of the penny dreadful fiction that Badger loves to read. Watson prefers the newspapers and scientific journals.

After all, someone in this partnership needs to keep their feet on the ground, especially with a case that has so much potential to ascend – or perhaps that’s descend – into flights of fantasy and mythology.

It begins with a mummy unwrapping party. An all too common event among the upper crust in the 1890s. It was the heyday of ‘Egyptomania’, with all of the implications of madness the word mania implies.

Badger and Watson were hired by Dr. Enoch Sawyer to provide security for his mummy unwrapping party. A party that takes an even more macabre turn when the mummy is finally unwrapped to reveal that it’s not the mummy of Runihura Saa. It’s the much more recent mummy of Dr. Enoch Sawyer – their client – who is clearly not going to be able to pay them for the job they are about to do on his behalf.

And the game is afoot!

Escape Rating A-: First, I loved this every bit as much as the first book in this series, The Isolated Séance. Second, I need to kick myself for not figuring out that the series title is a pun until now. I sorta/kinda thought the cases were “irregular” and they are that – from a séance in the first book to a mummy in the second. But it’s the DETECTIVES – or at least one of them – that are irregular. As in, the Baker Street Irregulars. 🤦🏻

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, what makes this case so much fun is the way that it blends the real with the fictional.

Mummy unwrapping parties were a very real thing in the 1890s – as shown in the painting below by artist Paul Dominique Philippoteaux circa 1890. The scene may seem macabre to 21st century readers, but such parties were all the rage in 1895, when The Mummy of Mayfair takes place.

Rage also being an important factor – at least in this particular case – as the ‘mania’ led people to strange rivalries and illegal behaviors – as humans are wont to do in the throes of a craze, fad, or mania. It still happens now, and humans haven’t changed all that much in just a bit over a century.

As much as the insanity of this particular mania turns out to be the impetus for the actions of the characters, what is making the series work are the characters and the way they manage to fit into – and take off from – the canon of Sherlock Holmes and ITS well-known and loved protagonists.

The best detectives, whether amateur or professional, are outsiders. It’s nearly impossible for humans to set aside their preconceived notions and biases in regards to people they know. A fact which very nearly sends the entire case on a wild goose chase, as one of the possible suspects is one of Badger’s former colleagues in the Irregulars.

But the triumvirate necessary to fill all of the roles that in the original canon were filled by just two changes the structure of the investigation even as it challenges the reader to see Holmes’ Victorian age from a considerably less lofty perspective.

Timothy Badger grew up in the East End, living by his wits and the nimbleness of his fingers. His accent clearly marks him as being of a “lower class” to the toffs among whom he now finds himself – and he has to grow into his role without giving up who he essentially is.

Benjamin Watson is a black man in a white world. The first thing that anyone sees when they meet him is the color of his skin. He has the intelligence and the drive to have been anything within his reach, but his reach in the late Victorian era is circumscribed by his race.

Miss Ellsie Moira Littleton is a woman in a man’s world. Much like Charlotte Sloane in the Regency-set Wrexford and Sloane series, Ellsie has been forced by circumstances to be self-supporting, and is on the outside of the society to which she was born. As an intelligent, educated, woman who needs to make her own way, she is also an outsider but with an entirely different perspective on the society of which she was once a member.

From its sensational beginning, the case is a deeply puzzling mess. Badger and Watson’s preconceived notions about their clients and their former associates, as well as their lack of knowledge of the precise ways the rich spend their time and money and protect their positions frequently send them haring off in the wrong directions – and we follow them eagerly even as they frequently caution each other.

As I’ve said frequently within these pages, I’m a sucker for Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and that’s why I initially started this series. Now I’m hooked! I’m really looking forward to the next book in this series, The Misplaced Physician, where we’ll finally get to meet Sherlock Holmes’ Watson, as Badger and his Watson will be on the case of rescuing him! It’s a good thing that investigative reporter Ellsie Littleton will be on hand to record the adventure, as the original Watson may be too embarrassed – or too injured – to write it up himself.

We’ll certainly see, hopefully this time next year!

#AudioBookReview: The Most Human by Adam Nimoy

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: The Most Human by Adam NimoyThe Most Human: Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy by Adam Nimoy
Narrator: Adam Nimoy
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: autobiography, biography, memoir, Star Trek
Pages: 272
Length: 9 hours and 18 minutes
Published by Chicago Review Press on June 4, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Living with Dad was like living with a stranger—as a kid I often had trouble connecting and relating to him. But I was always proud of him.
Even before Star Trek I'd see him popping up in bit roles on some of my favorite TV shows like Get Smart, Sea Hunt, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. And then one night he brought home Polaroids of himself in makeup and wardrobe for a pilot he was working on. It was December 1964 and nobody had heard of Star Trek. Still, the eight-year-old me had watched enough Outer Limits and My Favorite Martian to understand exactly what I was looking at.
Spock's popularity happened quickly, and soon the fan magazines were writing about dad's personal life, characterizing us as a "close family." But the awkwardness that defined our early relationship blossomed into conflict, sometimes smoldering, sometimes open and intense. There were occasional flashes of warmth between the arguments and hurt feelings—even something akin to love—especially when we were celebrating my father's many successes. The rest of the time, things between us were often strained.
My resentment towards my father kept building through the years. I wasn't blameless, I know that now, but my bitterness blinded me to any thought of my own contribution to the problem.
I wanted things to be different for my children. I wanted to be the father I never had, so I coached Maddy's soccer, drove Jonah to music lessons, helped them with their homework—all the things dads are supposed to do. All the things I wanted to do. So what if my Dad and I had been estranged for years? I was living one day at a time.
And then I got his letter.
That marked a turning point in our lives, a moment that cleared the way for a new relationship between us.

My Review:

It’s an iconic line, isn’t it? “Of all the souls I’ve encountered in my travels, his was the most human.” In my head, I still hear it with all of the Shatnerian pauses, and it still brings a tear to my eye, even though Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan came out more than 40 years ago – and we all know that wasn’t the end for either Spock or the man who made that ‘pointy-eared Vulcan’ a cultural icon.

But Spock was a fictional character, played by a very human man, filled with all of the virtues and flaws that are part and parcel of that human condition. This is a bit of the story of that humanity, as seen through the eyes of someone who was up close and personal with the virtues, and caught – or at least held onto – the brunt of entirely too many of the flaws.

And in this introduction, I’m doing exactly what the author has done – used the memory of his famous father to get at the story of his son. A role reversal of something that Leonard Nimoy once alluded to, that someone – actually someone looking for money in particular – would use his son to get at him.

So this isn’t a Star Trek story. And it explicitly isn’t a biography of Leonard Nimoy. Rather, it tells the story of the family that lived in, as the author referred to it, ‘the house that Star Trek bought’ in LA’s Westwood Village in 1968, how they got there, where they came from, and especially what happened after to the boy pictured on the book’s cover, Leonard Nimoy’s son Adam.

This is Adam’s journey, not Leonard’s. But, as with all families, the lives of the parents – who they were, where they came from, their reactions to the ways that their own parents raised them, and how they internalized that upbringing – reflect on their children, for better and for worse.

This is THAT story.

Reality Rating B: If you come to this book expecting a ‘Making of Star Trek’ story, you’re going to be disappointed. If you’re expecting a ‘warts and all’ biography, you’re not actually going to get that either. Not that both the father and the son didn’t have plenty of those.

This is, admittedly, a story about a man who was a hero and/or a touchstone for more than one generation of fans that shows that he had feet of clay up to the knees – but then so do most humans, which is kind of the point.

Circling back around again – because it is irresistible to talk about the father when this is a book by and about the son – it’s about a dad’s impact, both good and bad, on the life of one man who just so happens to be the son of someone famous.

Once one throws out the preconceived notions about what one expected in this autobiography, it’s something entirely different. At first, I had a bit of a difficult time connecting to the story and the author, but then it started to feel a whole lot more familiar than I expected.

His story resonated with me because our fathers were both products of the same Eastern European, Jewish immigrant, Depression-era generation. Both were workaholics who financially supported their families but weren’t physically around, were often in their own heads when they were, and as a result had strained relationships with their children. Adam Nimoy is my age, so we were viewing the world of the 1970s and 1980s from similar ages and from familiar backgrounds and expectations.

There are times when I wonder if ‘daddy issues’ are what makes the world go around, but I digress, just a bit.

I’m saying that once I found a way into his perspective a little, it made the whole thing work better for me. I listened to the audio, and even his speech cadences felt familiar – not because he sounds like his famous father – he doesn’t – but because those cadences arise from a similar time and place and culture. It was kind of like listening to a cousin.

His story is very much, at points, a walk through dark places, of taking heavy blows from sometimes self-inflicted wounds, and then walking a hard and frequently lonely path through recovery. It becomes a story about what happens after a person stops medicating their emotional pain away and starts feeling their feelings.

Which was something that resonated a hell of a lot more than I expected – as did the parts about how easy it is to hold onto old hurts and older grudges and how difficult it is to let them go.

Rating an autobiography feels different from rating a work of fiction, because even though I’m rating the story as it’s told, that can’t help but feel a bit like rating the life of the person telling it – no matter how much I try not to.  And rating someone else’s life is just wrong. It was what it was and it is what it is and what needs to matter here is how good a job the author AS AN AUTHOR does of telling the story they decided to tell – even though it’s theirs.

Which is where that B rating comes in. It did take me awhile to get into this book, and there were times when it felt like he was kind of whiney in a way that came out in the audio as well. The story is way more about the author’s recovery from addiction than it is about anything else in a way that’s good and important and feels real in its length and its details but also felt a bit long and repetitive as he had to repeat some of the steps – as one so frequently does. It also reads as a kind of ‘slice of life’ story that mostly hits the highlights – and lowlights – but doesn’t dwell on the everyday too much, but a little went a long way when it came to dealing with the family dysfunction – of which there was plenty.

Coming into this expecting one thing and getting another may throw off more than a few readers – although if they stick with it they’ll find a whole lot more than they originally expected. Anyone looking for a story that personalizes the ‘Twelve Steps of Recovery’ will likely find this fascinating, inspiring and helpful as he pulls it down to earth and makes it very real even as he’s invoking a ‘Higher Power’. And in the end, the audio works better than the text because the audio helps to make the story feel authentic. It’s him, and he’s telling his story – warts and all.