Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley

Review: Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Flyaway by Kathleen JenningsFlyaway by Kathleen Jennings
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, horror
Pages: 176
Published by Tordotcom on July 28, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers—a note that makes question her memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure.
A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles.
In these pages Jennings assures you that gothic delights, uncanny family horror, and strange, unsettling prose can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun.
Holly Black describes as “half mystery, half fairy tale, all exquisitely rendered and full of teeth.” Flyaway enchants you with the sly, beautiful darkness of Karen Russell and a world utterly its own.

My Review:

Flyaway is seriously creepy and extremely weird. It also proves that a place doesn’t need to be dark, gloomy and cold in order to generate plenty of shivers and chills. There’s plenty to be scared of in the hot, dry and sun parched, and there are just as many lonely places in the Australian Bush as there are in the dark castles of Europe or the ghost towns of the American West.

And family is everywhere. If most people are killed by someone they know, and most accidents occur in or near the home, it makes entirely too much creeptastic sense that your relatives are the ones you need to be afraid of the most, especially in an isolated place like Inglewell. Because Bettina Scott has more reasons to be afraid of her entire family than any one young woman ever should.

At first I thought Inglewell was going to turn out to be a kind of Brigadoon. Was I ever wrong!

Also at first, I thought the problem was that Bettina Scott was being drugged by her mother. There was certainly something wrong with Bettina and that relationship. And in the end there definitely was – just not exactly what I thought at the beginning.

Actually nothing about this story was exactly what I thought. Flyaway is as grim as any of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in the original versions, without the moralizing lesson at the end.

There’s a saying that the world is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we CAN imagine. But the world this author has imagined is way stranger than anywhere I’d ever want to be. Maybe that’s the point of that saying after all.

Escape Rating B-: This was weird. I know, I’ve said that already. But it was – very creepy and extremely weird. It’s also the darkest of dark fantasy, the kind that falls right over the border into horror.

It’s also the kind of horror that sort of, I think spirals out might be the best phrase, from a beginning that doesn’t seem too outre. Not that Bettina’s relationship with her mother doesn’t feel wrong from the very beginning, but at first it’s the kind of wrong that could have a logical explanation – or at least as logical as brainwashing, or drugs, or Munchausen syndrome by proxy. All horrible but not supernatural.

But as the story goes on, the story of Bettina breaking away from her mother, it’s interspersed with stories of supernatural horror that all take place in Inglewell, in the not too distant past. At first those stories don’t seem related, but as those stories catch up to Bettina’s “now’ we learn just how isolated, insular and downright creepy the area really is.

It’s like the isolation distilled the creep factor into something that really, really shouldn’t be running around in this world – but is. A something that every once in a while sucks in a new victim, and that entirely too many residents seem to accept as just part of life there.

But I left this book extremely glad that I don’t have to. I’m still creeped out. I really need a cocoa and a lie down after this one. This is not a way I ever want to pass again.

Review: The Woman in the Green Dress by Tea Cooper

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Woman in the Green Dress by Tea CooperThe Woman in the Green Dress by Tea Cooper
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, timeslip fiction
Pages: 352
Published by Thomas Nelson on June 16, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A cursed opal, a gnarled family tree, and a sinister woman in a green dress emerge in the aftermath of World War I.
After a whirlwind romance, London teashop waitress Fleur Richards can’t wait for her new husband, Hugh, to return from the Great War. But when word of his death arrives on Armistice Day, Fleur learns he has left her a sizable family fortune. Refusing to accept the inheritance, she heads to his beloved home country of Australia in search of the relatives who deserve it more.
In spite of her reluctance, she soon finds herself the sole owner of a remote farm and a dilapidated curio shop full of long-forgotten artifacts, remarkable preserved creatures, and a mystery that began more than sixty-five years ago. With the help of Kip, a repatriated soldier dealing with the sobering aftereffects of war, Fleur finds herself unable to resist pulling on the threads of the past. What she finds is a shocking story surrounding an opal and a woman in a green dress. . . a story that, nevertheless, offers hope and healing for the future.
This romantic mystery from award-winning Australian novelist Tea Cooper will keep readers guessing until the astonishing conclusion.
“Readers of Kate Morton and Beatriz Williams will be dazzled. The Woman in the Green Dress spins readers into an evocative world of mystery and romance in this deeply researched book by Tea Cooper. There is a Dickensian flair to Cooper’s carefully constructed world of lost inheritances and found treasures as two indomitable women stretched across centuries work to reconcile their pasts while reclaiming love, identity and belonging against two richly moving historical settings. As soon as you turn the last page you want to start again just to see how every last thread is sewn in anticipation of its thrilling conclusion. One of the most intelligent, visceral and vibrant historical reads I have had the privilege of visiting in an age.” —Rachel McMillan, author of The London Restoration 
“Refreshing and unique, The Woman in the Green Dress sweeps you across the wild lands of Australia in a thrilling whirl of mystery, romance, and danger. This magical tale weaves together two storylines with a heart-pounding finish that is drop-dead gorgeous.” —J’nell Ciesielski, author of The Socialite
Full-length historical story with both romance and mysteryStand-alone novelIncludes Discussion Questions for Book Clubs

My Review:

Particularly large and/or valuable gems often have legends attached to them. Or curses. Or both. Generally both. Based on its history, the Hope Diamond is probably safest in the Smithsonian, rather than around the neck of someone who might be the victim of its curse. Although its owner during the 1920s seems to have made a habit of letting her Great Dane wear it!

The gem at the heart of this intricate work of timeslip fiction would have been a magnet for myths, curses and thieves had it ever existed; a great, big, beautiful opal, the first of its kind to be discovered in Australia, at a time when Queen Victoria had made the wearing of opals all the rage. In spite of their previous reputation as unlucky.

Or cursed.

But the opal, cursed or otherwise, kind of acts like a brooch that pins this story together. A story that takes place in two separate time periods, 1853 and 1919. This is, after all, a timeslip story, so it’s the past that is unveiled in the 1853 timeline that needs to be resolved in the 1919 “present”.

And it’s a doozy.

Australia in 1853 is not too distant from its penal colony roots. Just distant enough that the emancipationists – the deported convicts, while still looked down upon, do have a chance of making a new life for themselves. Equally, they have a chance of getting up to their old tricks. Or perhaps a bit of both.

Australia is also a vast country much like the American West, where the white “settlers” were doing their level best – or should that be absolute worst – to push the continent’s original owners out of their ancestral lands – and even to the brink of extinction if it can be managed. But at the same time, it’s a big place and there are still, at least in 1853, places where the whites have not encroached much – at least not yet – and where the unique native flora and fauna still thrive. Although all are under threat.

And that’s where the earlier portions of this story begin. With a young woman who does her best to protect the native people she views as friends and fellow stewards of the lands around her. A woman whose job, whose art, is to preserve the native fauna at least through expert taxidermy, as her father did before her.

At least until her home and her life are invaded by a young man from Austria, on a journey to visit the sites that his mentor visited 20 years before. Together they find themselves caught up in a search for that fabulous missing opal, only to dig up way more than they bargained for in family secrets – and murder.

In 1919, Fleur Richards learns that her husband of just a few months has been killed in action in the closing days of the Great War, and that he has left his grief-stricken wife an inheritance she never knew he had. She thought that the dashing Australian soldier, Hugh Richards, was a young man with an eye to the future, but no more or greater financial prospects than her orphaned and impoverished self.

But the inheritance she does not want spurs her to travel halfway around the world to discover just who her husband really was, in the hopes of finding someone more deserving of his fortune than she believes herself to be.

She finds more than she bargained for. A cursed gem, a locked and abandoned shop of curios and wonders, the solution to a long-ago mystery. And a home.

Escape Rating A-: I have to say that The Woman in the Green Dress gets off to a bit of a slow start, hence the A- rating. Somewhere past the first third of the book the story takes off and develops all sorts of lovely twisty-turny plot threads that keep the story zipping along from there to the end.

But it takes a while to get there, approximately the amount of story it takes for Fleur to get to Australia and get fed up with the runaround she’s getting in Sydney. And on the historic side, the amount of time for Della to meet Stefan and decide to take her life back in her own hands by returning to Sydney to discover what changes her Aunt Cordelia has made in the shop that Della owns.

And I’ve just realized the juxtaposition, that Della’s story takes off when she gets to Sydney, and Fleur’s gets its wings when she leaves it. Not that Fleur doesn’t return fairly quickly, but as the two heroines start moving – so does the story.

Both the past and the present stories are wrapped around secrets. Della has to uncover the secrets that her Aunt is keeping – before those secrets get her killed. Not that they haven’t already left a trail of bodies in their wake. Fleur needs to uncover the secret of who her husband really was, and to learn the truth about the legacy he left behind for her to unravel and resolve.

In the end, it’s a story about the truth setting them both free. And about a beautiful, captivating opal that was both lost and found.

But that woman in the green dress – she’s pure poison. Her story, however, is as delicious as her tonic is deadly.

TLC
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Review: An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: An Unnatural Life by Erin K. WagnerAn Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction
Pages: 192
Published by Tor.com on September 15, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Murderbot meets To Kill a Mockingbird in Erin K. Wagner's An Unnatural Life, an interplanetary tale of identity and responsibility.
The cybernetic organism known as 812-3 is in prison, convicted of murdering a human worker but he claims that he did not do it. With the evidence stacked against him, his lawyer, Aiya Ritsehrer, must determine grounds for an appeal and uncover the true facts of the case.
But with artificial life-forms having only recently been awarded legal rights on Earth, the military complex on Europa is resistant to the implementation of these same rights on the Jovian moon.
Aiya must battle against her own prejudices and that of her new paymasters, to secure a fair trial for her charge, while navigating her own interpersonal drama, before it's too late.

My Review:

I picked this up as early as I did because it was teasing me. Specifically, the recommendations I received from a friend listed some readalikes for this book and I was just sure that something was missing – actually I was positive that at least two somethings were missing – and I had to read it to see if I was right.

You know how it is, there’s something on the tip of your tongue, or just out of reach in your memory but you can’t quite grasp it. It was driving me nuts that I just couldn’t remember what one of the books I KNEW this reminded me of was, so I had to read it and find out.

In case you’re wondering, the recommendation said Murderbot, which, well, of course, yes. Because Murderbot is so ‘top of mind’ after the recent release of Network Effect. And there is something to be said for the correlation, although strictly speaking Murderbot isn’t exactly a self-aware AI. Self-aware, absolutely, an AI,  not exactly. But the concept of humans creating an enslavable and exploitable underclass is certainly a match. The other readalike was the classic The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov, which I have not read. The ‘so many books, so little time’ conundrum rears its ugly head yet again.

I was thinking of Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport for both the self-aware AI and the specifically created underclass, even though in Medusa they are not exactly embodied in the same person – or at least not all of the time.

But those references felt fairly obvious. The one lurking in the back of my mind turned out to be the steampunk world created in Ian Tregillis’ Alchemy Wars series, starting with The Mechanical. While the ‘mechanicals’ of that series were created through alchemy rather than science, the situation they find themselves in is much the same as it is in An Unnatural Life. They are created to be slaves and they seem to have no recourse towards freedom. But they are self-aware, and they strike out for freedom anyway, in spite of the odds, the laws, and their own programming.

In the end, the story this reminded me of the most was the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man“, where Data is on trial. Not for a crime as the AI here is, but for his right to be a self-determining being in his own right, and not property as has occurred in the world posited in this story. Picard’s speech in Data’s defense echoes many of the abuses that are highlighted in this story, as it is all too clear from humanity’s history that if Data is not considered an autonomous being in his own right that he and others like him will be declared to be ‘property’ and abused as happened in the backstory for this book. Also as did happen in the later history of the universe of Star Trek, as represented in the events of its latest series, Star Trek: Picard.

The story in An Unnatural Life, just like the story in The Measure of a Man, isn’t really about the android, the AI, the ‘grunt’, after all. It’s a story about humans, and about humanity’s inhumanity to humanity. It’s about just how very easy we find it to believe that anyone we define as ‘them’ can be treated as inhumanely as we want, because we’ve decided that the only ones worthy of being considered ‘human’ are ‘us’.

But Walt Kelly’s Pogo had it right all along when he said, “We have met the enemy and he is us”. And he still is.

Escape Rating A-: There are actually two stories in this slim little volume. One is the obvious, the story of Aiya Ritsehrer’s appeal on behalf of the AI 812-3 due to the obvious fact that the AI did not face a jury of his peers, but rather a jury that was utterly prejudiced against the AI, as was the judge and the prosecution. Aiya is convinced the AI did not receive a fair trial, and it’s oh-so-clear that she is correct.

There is also a story tucked in-between the chapters about Aiya, the trial and its result. I think that it was about an expedition to discover whether or not there was already life on Europa when it was settled by humans. But that story is more tantalizing than realized. Which is possibly intended, but left me a bit frustrated by its ambiguity, hence the A- rating.

Back to the story I’m entirely too sure of. One of the things that so frequently gets lost in the gee-whiz sensawunda that science fiction and fantasy often provoke is that no matter who or what is at the center of the story, no matter where or when it is set, all stories are about human beings. Because human beings are the only creatures that we really know. Writers may do their very best to guesstimate what androids or aliens in the far future or the mythic past might think and feel and say and do, but the fact is that the perspective from which all of those ‘otherworldly’ characters are written is the human one in the here and now of the author.

So from one perspective this is a story about a self-aware AI in search of justice on one of Jupiter’s moons. But on the other, the story underneath that, is a story about prejudice and justice. It’s a story about the lengths and depths that humans, following their worser instincts and not their better ones, will go to in order to preserve the status quo that makes them feel safe and comfortable.

It is also a story about one woman fighting, not just for justice for an underdog, but for what is right instead of what is easy, in spite of all of her own prejudices, and in spite of the very real fear that her pursuit of justice will bring her into deadly danger in a situation where no one will stand by her, no one will protect her, and no one will seek justice on her behalf.

Because all of those humans believe that their hatred of ‘the other’ and their willingness, even eagerness to destroy anyone who shines a light on that hatred, is not human either and therefore deserves whatever happens to them. That they brought it on themselves, and that their fate is not the fault of anyone but themselves for standing up for ‘the other’.

And if you don’t see any parallels between the story and both history and current events, you’re not paying attention.

Review: A Choir of Crows by Candace Robb

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Choir of Crows by Candace RobbA Choir of Crows (Owen Archer, #12) by Candace Robb
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Owen Archer #12
Pages: 288
Published by Severn House on June 30, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads


When two bodies are discovered in the grounds of York Minster shortly before the enthronement of the new archbishop, Owen Archer is summoned to investigate.
 December, 1374. With the great and the good about to descend on York for the enthronement of Alexander Neville as the new archbishop, the city authorities are in a state of high alert. When two bodies are discovered in the grounds of York Minster, and a flaxen-haired youth with the voice of an angel is found locked in the chapter house, Owen Archer, captain of the city bailiffs, is summoned to investigate. Tension deepens when an enigmatic figure from Owen's past arrives in the city. Why has he returned from France after all these years - and what is his connection with the bodies in the minster yard and the fair singer? Before Owen can make headway in the investigation, a third body is fished out of the river - and the captain finds himself with three mysterious deaths to solve before the all-powerful Neville family arrives in York.

My Review:

By some reckonings, the events in A Choir of Crows take place during the “Little Ice Age”, the era in European history that spawned the sumptuous costumes that we associate with Renaissance Faires today. Because it was just so damn cold. You can practically hear the icy winds of December, 1374 whistling through this story.

The chill actually feels pretty good in this strange summer of 2020. It’s already hot down here.

But I came to this story not for its bracing weather, but because I got into a mood for historical fiction and mysteries, and this series always satisfies that particular itch.

Like the best of its kind, the Owen Archer series takes place during a time of great upheaval, and it mixes its search for whodunnit with insight into why it was done – or why it was covered up – and who is playing politics with whom and to what ends as Captain Owen Archer investigates a series of murders in his city while the worthies of the entire country descend upon York for the investiture of its new Archbishop.

Who is a much lesser man than the one he replaces. A man who is very much beholden to and under the heavy thumb of one of the most ambitious lords of the entire kingdom – his older brother, Sir John Neville, Baron of Raby. The Nevilles were one of the great families of Northern England, and they rose to become kingmakers during the Wars of the Roses.

This series is set at what will be the foundation of those Wars, as King Edward III is old and infirm, his oldest son and heir, The Black Prince, is young but struck down by disease, and the crown will become a prize in the squabbles between alternate heirs, sons, grandsons and even great-grandsons of Edward III in the mid-1400s.

But that is in the future. In the present, Owen Archer has a mess on his hands. Three men are dead. His assistant has discovered a young woman, disguised as a young man, at the site of two of the deaths. One might have been by misadventure but the other was certainly murder. The murdered man was a clergyman, he died within the precincts of York Minster, the Archbishop has not yet been invested in his throne – not that anyone believes he will know how to deal with this problem – unlike his predecessor.

There is a vacuum in authority, but a desperate need to put the entire situation behind them before the archbishop and his party – particularly his powerful brother – arrive on the scene to force a solution. One that suits them rather than any truth.

Owen is under pressure to solve the crimes and protect the young woman who seems to be at the heart of the mess while still being a victim of it. And to keep his family and friends safe from the power struggle yet to come.

Because Owen is not merely the Captain of the City Watch. He’s also The Black Prince’s right hand man in York – making the Nevilles his enemies – quite possibly of the deadly variety.

Escape Rating A: I absolutely adore this series, and reading this now instead of in a couple of weeks was definitely a case of the right book at the right time. After yesterday’s review, I really, really wanted to read this next – so I did.

But as much as I love this series, I’ll admit to having a difficult time figuring out where to recommend a newbie start it. Part of what I love is the way that the mystery dovetails into the history – and this is an era of history that I studied a bit and remember. So I’m riveted pretty much all of the time. I don’t think that would be true for someone who came into it cold, particularly not 12 books in.

Memory says that in the beginning the political situation was less complicated and less part of the story, that the focus was much more on the mystery and on the characters, as Owen arrives in York gets caught up in solving a murder, and is caught between hunting for a killer and fearing that the killer is the woman he has fallen in love with. So start at the beginning with The Apothecary Rose. If historical mystery is your cup of tea, it’s a great place to begin. (If the historical period in which this series takes place fascinates you, Jeri Westerson’s Crispin Guest is operating just a decade or so later, and the political mess has only become even more fraught in the interim.)

Back to A Choir of Crows. Yes, I know that the collective noun for crows is a murder, but that’s not what is being referred to by the title. Just FYI.

The story here does an excellent job of mixing the people with the politics. And in this instance I mean politics with a small “p” and not the large “P” of the national political upheaval going on at the time.

While Owen’s methods for solving crime may lack in 21st century forensics, the issues that he has to deal with are all too familiar. He has to solve the murders before the powers-that-be arrive and force a solution. We’ve all seen that in contemporary life and policing, where someone is railroaded into a confession so that everything can be swept under the carpet. Forensics may have advanced, but human nature hasn’t changed much at all – not even in seven centuries.

The young woman at the heart of this mystery is a victim every bit as much – actually as it turns out quite a bit more – than the man who was murdered. But she’s all too aware that even though none of what happened is in any way her fault, she’ll still be blamed for all of it merely because she is female. And that hasn’t changed much either.

However, as many things and issues as are wrapped around this case, at its heart is a good man determined to see justice served, protect his family, his friends and his city to the best of his ability, and to keep his word and his oaths. And that’s a story well worth reading, whether it takes place in this or any other era.

A few years ago, after the story in A Vigil of Spies, it felt like this series was coming to an end. While it would have been a fitting ending, I was pleased as Punch to see Owen return in A Conspiracy of Wolves. And I hope to see MANY further adventures in this well-written, thoroughly researched and utterly compelling series.

Review: The Heirs of Locksley by Carrie Vaughn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Heirs of Locksley by Carrie VaughnThe Heirs of Locksley (The Robin Hood Stories, #2) by Carrie Vaughn
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, retellings
Series: Robin Hood Stories #2
Pages: 128
Published by Tordotcom on August 4, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Carrie Vaughn follows up The Ghosts of Sherwood with the charming, fast-paced The Heirs of Locksley, continuing the story of Robin Hood's children.

"We will hold an archery contest. A simple affair, all in fun, on the tournament grounds. Tomorrow. We will see you there."

The latest civil war in England has come and gone, King John is dead, and the nobility of England gathers to see the coronation of his son, thirteen year old King Henry III.

The new king is at the center of political rivalries and power struggles, but John of Locksley―son of the legendary Robin Hood and Lady Marian―only sees a lonely boy in need of friends. John and his sisters succeed in befriending Henry, while also inadvertently uncovering a political plot, saving a man's life, and carrying out daring escapes.

All in a day's work for the Locksley children...

My Review:

I picked this up, admittedly rather early, because it combines two of my great reading loves, English history and fanfiction. And I really, truly was NOT expecting the second part of that equation.

I fell in love with English history at age 12, after seeing the movie Anne of a Thousand Days. I have no idea what drew me in so strongly. Certainly not any direct relationship to the history portrayed as I have zero English ancestry. Whether it was the pageantry, the politics or the power, I was absolutely hooked, leading to a life-long interest in British history, whether fictionalized or not.

Not that some of what grabbed me, like the Robin Hood and King Arthur, aren’t of dubious historical accuracy – at best.

But this particular novella duology – at least it’s a duology so far – does a terrific job of setting Robin Hood, Robin of Locksley, into a reasonably historical version of the time in which he was supposed to have lived, and skirts around the issues of exactly which, if any, of the tales about him might be true by making him a secondary character in these stories.

In these stories, Robin is no longer the outlaw of Sherwood. And he’s no longer a young man. Instead, he’s well into middle age, still powerful, still feared and hated and loved in equal measure, but also someone who recognizes that his time will inevitably draw to a close, sooner rather than later.

These stories focus on his children with Marian; his oldest daughter Mary, his son and heir John, and his slightly fey child Eleanor as they take their first steps into adulthood.

They also do a good job of giving bits of long-ago English history a face that makes them still feel relevant. The first book, The Ghosts of Sherwood, was a story about reckoning. About the nobles who favored King John still trying to eliminate Robin as a threat or a power, while the political maneuvering brought the negotiations surrounding the Magna Carta becomes personalized through his enemies attempt to kidnap his children – and his children manage to rescue themselves using the lessons their father and life on the edge of Sherwood have taught them.

In The Heirs of Locksley, the times have changed and the story has moved on a bit. It is 1220, and King John is dead. His 13-year-old son sits uneasily on the throne that he will occupy for the rest of his life. But Henry of Winchester, Henry III, is still a boy. A boy who never knew his father, but still stands in his shadow. The shadow of a man who seems to have pissed off everyone he ever knew.

Robin’s son John knows all about standing in a father’s long shadow. The two boys make a surprising common cause that leads them on an adventure that neither expected – to the consternation of all of the adults that surround them.

Escape Rating A-: I said at the beginning that this combined my loves of English history and fanfiction. The setting of these tales is between two of my favorite historical mystery series, both set in England and both occurring at times of great upheavals in history – as this series does.

I’m speaking of the Brother Cadfael series, by the late Ellis Peters, set in Shrewsbury, English between 1135 and 1145, at a time when the country was in the midst of a civil war. This series was also one of the first historical mystery series I have read, and the foundation of the popularity of the genre to this day.

The other series is the Owen Archer series, set in York in the late 1300s during the events that would eventually lead to yet another civil war, the Wars of the Roses. Both of these series, like these Robin Hood stories, do a fantastic job of drawing the reader directly into their time and place while still managing to comment on either our own, the immutability of human nature, or both.

(And now I’m missing Owen and will be moving the latest book in that series all the way up the virtually towering TBR pile!)

But I also referred to the Robin Hood stories as fanfiction – as the author does in the afterword to this book. It’s a concept that now that I’ve seen it, I can’t un-see it – and it resonates.

After all, the Robin Hood stories that we all know today weren’t written down until the late 1400s at the very earliest, three centuries after the adventures they portray. And even then, those written stories were merely printed versions of oral traditions that had arisen during the interim, sometime between Robin’s own time and the invention of the printing press.

As part of an oral tradition, the stories that were printed were the ones that were remembered, whether because they were the best stories, the most memorable ones, were just told by particularly charismatic storytellers – or all of the above. There’s no historical canon version, just a lot of stories that center around a larger-than-life character and his band of outlaws as they rebelled against an unjust authority.

It’s a “Fix-it” fic where the heroes fight wrongs and make things better in the end, as occurs when Richard the Lionhearted returns to his kingdom and the evil Sheriff of Nottingham is forced to leave Robin and his gang alone. The story conveniently ends before King Richard is killed and John takes back over, this time for good – or ill.

The Robin Hood Stories series are a kind of “next generation” fanfic where the author takes the beloved characters and tells readers what happened after the happy ever after, moving the story to the literal next generation, the earlier heroes’ children.

So she’s right. Not just that these stories feel like fanfiction but that the original Robin Hood stories were too. Complete with the “so many variations that the original canon is obscured” problem. In my review of the first book I noted that there’s a trend towards retellings going on right now. The world has gone mad and we’re all looking for the comfort of stories we know and love, in variations that may hold a few surprises but ultimately lead back to the tales that we already know.

And that’s what these Robin Hood Stories have been so far for me. A lovely comfort read with an interesting view of a historical period that I enjoy, an ultimately a visit with some old and very dear friends.

I hope there will be more.

Review: Driving the Deep by Suzanne Palmer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Driving the Deep by Suzanne PalmerDriving the Deep (Finder Chronicles, #2) by Suzanne Palmer
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Series: Finder Chronicles #2
Pages: 432
Published by DAW Books on May 5, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From a Hugo Award-winning author comes the second book in this action-packed sci-fi caper, starring Fergus Ferguson, interstellar repo man and professional finder.
As a professional finder, Fergus Ferguson is hired to locate missing objects and steal them back. But it is rarely so simple, especially after his latest job in Cernee. He's been recovering from that experience in the company of friends, the Shipmakers of Pluto, experts at crafting top-of-the-line AI spaceships.
The Shipmakers have convinced Fergus to finally deal with unfinished business he's been avoiding for half his life: Earth. Fergus hasn't been back to his homeworld since he was fifteen, when he stole his cousin's motorcycle and ran away. It was his first theft, and nothing he's stolen since has been anywhere near so easy, or weighed so heavily on his conscience. Many years and many jobs later, Fergus reluctantly agrees that now is the time to return the motorcycle and face his family.
Unfortunately, someone has gotten to the motorcycle before him. And before he can figure out where it went and why the storage unit that held it is now filled with priceless, stolen art, the Shipyard is attacked. His friends are missing, presumably kidnapped.
Accompanied by an untrustworthy detective who suspects Fergus is the art thief and the sole friend who escaped the attack, Fergus must follow the tenuous clues to locate and save his friends. The trail leads them to Enceladus, where Fergus plans to go undercover to the research stations that lie beneath the moon's thick ice sheet deep in a dark, oppressive ocean.
But all movement and personnel are watched, and the limited ways through the thick ice of the moon's surface are dangerous and highly monitored. Even if Fergus can manage to find proof that his friends are there and alive, getting out again is going to be a lot more complicated than he bargained for.

My Review:

Fergus Ferguson has a gift, and not just the one that he thinks he has, his ability to put the pieces together to find things – and people – that are missing. Fergus’ more important gift is the gift of making friends wherever he goes – no matter how dangerous the situation or unlikely the friendship might be. Or how incredibly difficult the mess he makes may be to get out of.

Because Fergus Ferguson is every bit as good at making his life into a mess as he is at finding his way out of the mess he’s just made.

But this particular mess is going to be a bigger challenge than average – even for him. His friends from the Shipyards at Pluto are all missing, presumed dead. Or possibly missing, presumed kidnapped. Except for the one who isn’t dead, but is suspected of having caused the kidnapping and/or death of the others. Except she didn’t, but someone is trying awfully hard to make it look that way, in order to make everyone look the other way from whatever really happened.

Meanwhile, Fergus is stuck, deep under the ice on Enceladus, Saturn’s ice-covered moon. After all, it’s easy to hide things in a cold and dark place that damn few people want to go to in the first place. Especially dirty deeds being done, not exactly dirt cheap. Possibly on the public’s dime – or whatever passes for currency by Fergus’ time.

All Fergus has to do is figure out if his friends are down there, where they’re being held if they are, why they were kidnapped in the first place – and, of course, rescue them. Without getting them all killed.

And especially without drawing the notice of “the Bastards Above”.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I loved the first book in the Finder Chronicles. That book is named basically for Fergus, and it’s just called Finder. And it’s awesome.

Both books, in fact, are an absolute treat to listen to, as the entire story so far is told from Fergus’ first person perspective, and the narrator does an excellent job of capturing Fergus’ wry, self-deprecating and universe-weary tone.

Howsomever, as often happens, I listened to the first half of this one and read the second, because I just couldn’t wait to find out how Fergus got himself out of the mess this time. Because it’s a doozy.

This feels like a story about closure, and perversely about opening. There’s that saying that when one door closes, another one opens. For Fergus, it feels a bit like he has to close that first door before he can let himself open the second one. Fergus ran away from home on Earth in his late teens, just after his dad committed suicide by drowning. An act that certainly comes back to haunt Fergus in the deeps under the ice of Enceladus.

But this story begins with Fergus going back to Earth for the first time in two decades, because there’s that door behind him that he needs to close. When he left he stole his cousin’s motorcycle. And it’s time for him to go back and take care of that debt, because looking back is keeping him from moving forward.

No plan of Fergus’ ever seems to survive contact with, well, Fergus, so his plan to get the motorcycle out of the storage locker he’s been paying for all these years turns up, not the motorcycle, but a whole bunch of stolen paintings that seem to be the ill-gotten gains from a museum robbery not unlike the real-life Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft in Boston in 1990.

Uncovering the paintings uncovers an undercover cop looking for the thieves. An obsessed man who is convinced that Fergus was one of the thieves he’s been hunting for years. Of course, his plans don’t survive Fergus either, and eventually, after a lot of misunderstandings and a few bouts of fisticuffs, they both end up trying to free Fergus’ friends.

But all of that turns out to be setup, as fascinating as it generally was. The story is really Fergus’ story, all alone in the dark of Enceladus, desperately hanging on to hope and trying to come up with a plan, in the face of the endless night and the unrelenting dark under the water.

In the end, with the help of new friends and old, including the stray cat Mister Feefs, Fergus manages to find the heart of this mystery. After all, while Fergus’ own plans never survive contact with Fergus – neither do anybody else’s.

Review: Red Sky Over Hawaii by Sara Ackerman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Red Sky Over Hawaii by Sara AckermanRed Sky Over Hawaii by Sara Ackerman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, World War II
Pages: 352
Published by Mira Books on June 9, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Inspired by real places and events of WWII, Red Sky Over Hawaii immerses the reader in a time of American history full of suspicion and peril in this lush and poignant tale about the indisputable power of doing the right thing against all odds.
The attack on Pearl Harbor changes everything for Lana Hitchcock. Arriving home on the Big Island too late to reconcile with her estranged father, she is left alone to untangle the clues of his legacy, which lead to a secret property tucked away in the remote rain forest of Kilauea volcano. When the government starts taking away her neighbors as suspected sympathizers, Lana shelters two young German girls, a Japanese fisherman and his son. As tensions escalate, they are forced into hiding—only to discover the hideaway house is not what they expected.
When a detainment camp is established nearby, Lana struggles to keep the secrets of those in her care. Trust could have dangerous consequences. As their lives weave together, Lana begins to understand the true meaning of family and how the bonds of love carry us through the worst times.

My Review:

The story of Red Sky Over Hawaii is a combination of real places and events, a real dog not contemporaneous with the history, and a plot that feels like it owes perhaps a bit too much to women’s fiction into a look at events in Hawaii for the year that immediately follows the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Both the Alaskan and Hawaiian experiences of the war were different from those on the mainland. Islands in the Aleutian chain, territory of the U.S., were occupied and held by Japanese forces during the war. Hawaii, although it was never held, was directly attacked by Japan on December 7, 1942, the day that FDR claimed would live in infamy. And so it has.

After the attack, the situation on the ground was also a bit different. The internment camps created to house Japanese-Americans, and the quickly passed and racially-motivated laws that saw so many from the West Coast forced to sell or abandon their property as they were shipped to hellish camps for crimes they had neither committed nor even been tried for, including young children, is a crime that is still being paid for.

But the story of Red Sky Over Hawaii shows that the situation was a bit different in Hawaii, and also reminds readers that American citizens from all of the Axis Powers were harassed, detained and imprisoned, although the numbers of German-American and Italian-American detainees were considerably fewer.

As this story begins, in the days before Pearl Harbor, Lana Hitchcock flies from Honolulu to Hilo on a rather scarily small plane in the hopes of seeing her estranged father one last time before he dies. The meeting is not to be, but in the aftermath of the attack, Lana finds herself alone, grieving and looking for a lifeline.

A lifeline that she catches in what could be considered unlikely as well as unfortunate sources, at least for others. Her father’s neighbors, a German-American couple with their two daughters, leave the girls with her when they find themselves detained by the FBI on suspicion of being, basically, German-Americans. Her other neighbors, the elderly Japanese American Mochi and his grandson Benji, are certain that Mochi, at least, will be rounded up and taken away as well.

Lana, in desperation, decides to help her neighbors, or at least their children, by taking as many of them as she can to the remote cottage that her father left her, near the volcano Kilauea. The volcano area is remote and sparsely populated. It should be safe for Lana and her collection of refugees.

But when the nearby Army base is opened as one of several Japanese-American detainment camps on the island, Lana and her charges are in grave danger. And Lana is in danger of losing her heart to one of the soldiers – someone who will never be able to forgive her for all the lies she has told in her attempt to keep everyone safe.

Escape Rating B: Fair warning, this is going to be one of my mixed feelings reviews. Because I have very mixed feelings about this book.

I really, really wanted to love this book. Truly. But I just didn’t. I ended up left with the feeling that it is very well written, well-researched, absolutely has an audience, and that I’m just not quite it.

One of the ways in which the writing really got me, as in it moved me terribly, was in the descriptions of Lana’s grief at her father’s sudden death and her regrets about the time they wasted not really communicating. Because I went through all of that and STILL have a whole lot of regrets and tears almost 30 years later. Some griefs never leave us, so that part of her story resonated so hard I almost couldn’t get through it.

At the same time, I found a lot of Lana’s story read like it belonged in a contemporary women’s fiction story rather than a book that feels like it’s trying to say something about the Hawaiian experience of World War II in the period directly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And not that I don’t generally enjoy women’s fiction. It’s just that these two great tastes didn’t go great together IMHO.

I think that Lana’s troubles, for me, hit the “one too many” button. Her dad has just died, and that’s both heartbreaking and a necessary part of the story, as it’s her inheritance from him that provides the refuge for the family she gathers around herself. But she’s also separated from her cheating husband, about to get divorced, and her marriage fell apart because she can’t have children. AND there’s a scumbag after her and especially the two girls she’s taking care of. The addition of the scumbag felt over-the-top. It created a bit of a heroine-in-jeopardy plot that wasn’t needed. They were all in enough bloody jeopardy without the scumbag.

I have mixed feelings about the German-American parents being dragged off to detention leaving Lana with their two girls. Not that it wasn’t historically plausible, because it certainly was. But the detention of both German-Americans and Italian-Americans didn’t have the heavy weight of racial animus that the detention of Japanese-Americans certainly did. Although the way that the whole situation bowed to economic necessity was fascinating. Because of the large percentage of Japanese-Americans who were part of the Hawaiian population, the number of people in the internment camps remained relatively small as those people were needed to keep the economy running. Remote places like Hawaii (and Alaska) just don’t have an easy option for bringing large numbers of people in.

I did like the tiny bit of magical realism stuck into the healing properties of the honey made by the bees living in the shadow of the volcano. That part was cool and the touch of it was just right.

So a mixed bag of feelings, and a mixed-feeling kind of review. Your reading mileage may definitely vary.

Review: Riviera Gold by Laurie R. King

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Riviera Gold by Laurie R. KingRiviera Gold (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #16) by Laurie R. King
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes #16
Pages: 336
Published by Bantam on June 9, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn the Riviera upside-down to crack their most captivating case yet in the New York Times bestselling series that Lee Child called “the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”
It’s summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Côte d’Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins…

My Review:

I wish that Mary Russell and Phryne Fisher could meet – they are, after all, contemporaries. If it ever happens, I’d very much like to be a fly on that wall. They feel very much like sisters under the skin, so any meeting between them would be explosive. Possibly literally. I would say that I wanted to witness a meeting between Russell and Lord Peter Wimsey, as this is also his era and the world that Russell inhabits, particularly in this story, is also his. But that meeting already occurred, somewhat surreptitiously in multiple senses of the word, in A Letter of Mary.

Not that Mary doesn’t become casually involved with several luminaries of the “Lost Generation” in this story, notably Pablo Picasso, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos and Gerald and Sara Murphy. And that’s after becoming acquainted with Cole Porter during his Venice sojourn in the previous book in this series, Island of the Mad.

Mary gets around, both as the wife of Sherlock Holmes and as herself. And the case in Riviera Gold is one where those two roles come into a bit of a conflict.

As Mary discovered in The Murder of Mary Russell, her now-former housekeeper, the grandmother-of-her-heart Clara Hudson, was not exactly the shy, quiet, retiring and unassuming ladylady/housekeeper that Mary had assumed her to be. Rather, that was a role that Clarissa Hudson camouflaged herself as, in order to stay a few steps ahead of the law, as well as the less-than-savory people who had been hunting her for most of her life. And kept her under the thumb of Sherlock Holmes, who has never completely trusted her and has always been certain that she would return to her actually quite wicked – and thieving – ways the minute his back was turned.

But Mary misses Clarissa Hudson, no matter what name she lives under, so when the opportunity arises for her to take a leisurely trip from Venice to Monte Carlo, where Clarissa Hudson might possibly be residing, Mary can’t resist. Only to discover that Mrs.Hudson’s nefarious past seems to have caught up with her, not just in the person of the “Jersey Lily”, but in the matter of the dead man discovered lying at her feet.

Escape Rating A: I have been following the adventures of Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes from the very beginning of this series, back in 1994 with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. The premise was initially a bit hard to swallow – retired Sherlock Holmes takes on 15-year-old apprentice and eventually marries her – but the story and the series went down surprisingly smoothly and I’ve never regretted listening to that first story.

However, after 25 years of eagerly awaiting every story, it’s impossible for me to say that any books in the series stand completely alone, and equally difficult for me to tell a newbie where to begin. They’re awesome. Just dive in.

Mary Russell is one of a number of young female sleuths, whether amateur or professional, who came of age during or just after World War I. It’s a stellar list that includes not just Phryne Fisher, but also Maisie Dobbs, Bess Crawford, Elena Standish and Jane Wunderly. But Mary is special, not just because her story began before any of the others, but because of the inclusion of her husband and partner Sherlock Holmes and all of the canon that he drags in with him. It feels like their story has just a bit more depth, and his reputation – or his brother Mycroft’s – gives them entree into places that the others can’t quite manage on their own.

Like many stories in the series, this is one where the focus is primarily on Mary, while Holmes’ activities are in the background. She comes to find Clarissa Hudson, because the woman was such a huge part of her life and is now off on her own adventures. Mary wants to make sure Clarissa is alright – no matter how clear it is that the older woman is more than capable of managing on her own. Sherlock, on the other hand, wants to make sure that Clarissa is still on the straight-and-narrow.

Neither of them are prepared to discover that the woman is up to her neck in murder and smuggling. But their motives are different. Mary wants to save her. Sherlock wants to discover a truth that he has long feared. Their conflict is poignant, as Mary’s quest puts her in danger for a friend that Holmes isn’t sure is worth the sacrifice. That the danger is covered in molten bronze among stolen artifacts – along with international arms dealers and aristocratic Russian emigres – just adds to the fun and ratchets up the risk at every turn.

A big part of this particular story’s charm is the charm of Monte Carlo itself, not as the glittering confection we know it today, but rather as a slightly down-at-the-heel former hotspot looking for a comeback. It’s a place that was and will be, but isn’t right at that very moment. And it’s lovely and captivating and decadent in ways that are unexpected.

As has been this whole series so far. At the end of this story, there are hints that Holmes and Russell are off to Romania to look into a spot of vampire trouble. I can’t wait!

Review: The Summer House by Lauren K. Denton

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Summer House by Lauren K. DentonThe Summer House by Lauren K. Denton
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 352
Published by Thomas Nelson on June 2, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Sometimes it takes losing everything to find yourself again.
Lily Bishop wakes up one morning to find a good-bye note and divorce papers from her husband on the kitchen counter. Having moved to Alabama for his job only weeks before, Lily is devastated, but a flyer at the grocery store for a hair stylist position in a local retirement community provides a refuge while she contemplates her next steps.
Rose Carrigan built the small retirement village of Safe Harbor years ago—just before her husband ran off with his assistant. Now she runs a tight ship, making sure the residents follow her strict rules. Rose keeps everyone at arm’s length, including her own family. But when Lily shows up asking for a job and a place to live, Rose’s cold exterior begins to thaw.
Lily and Rose form an unlikely friendship, and Lily’s salon soon becomes the place where residents share town gossip, as well as a few secrets. Lily soon finds herself drawn to Rose’s nephew, Rawlins—a single dad and shrimper who’s had some practice at starting over—and one of the residents may be carrying a torch for Rose as well.
Neither Lily nor Rose is where she expected to be, but the summer makes them both wonder if there’s more to life and love than what they’ve experienced so far. The Summer House weaves Lauren K. Denton’s inviting Southern charm around a woman’s journey to find herself.
“The perfect summer read! You’ll feel the sun, taste the salt, and linger with new friends—you won’t want to leave.” —Katherine Reay, bestselling author of The Printed Letter Bookshop and Dear Mr. Knightley

My Review:

I grabbed The Summer House by Lauren K. Denton because a couple of years ago I picked up The Hideaway basically on a whim, loved it, and then read Glory Road and pretty much loved that too. The only book by this author I haven’t read – YET – is Hurricane Season, but in this year where everyone seems to need all the comfort reads they can get I expect to pick it up in the not too distant future.

Like the author’s previous books, The Summer House is relationship fiction, which often gets labeled and more often than not denigrated, as “women’s fiction”, but the relationship fiction label is much nearer the mark. Because it’s always about the relationships between people, often but not always family or found family, and frequently including the relationships between people in a small town.

And if women are the only ones who care about all the different kinds of relationships that people can have, whether in families or groups or communities, doesn’t that explain a whole lot about what’s wrong with the world these days?

The relationships that are on display, or perhaps under the microscope, or a bit of both, in this particular story are centered around two people, Lily Bishop and Rose Carrigan. As the story opens, both are at crossroads in their lives, and the route they each take leads them directly into each other’s path.

A path that runs straight through the retirement village so aptly named Safe Harbor. The place where Rose has been pretty much standing still for the past 40 years or so. Rose is known around town as the “Ice Queen” because she freezes out anyone who tries to get close to her, except for her nephew Rawlins and his daughter Hazel. She’s certainly not looking to shelter anyone under her wing.

But, when Lily Bishop calls Rose asking for a job as the resident hairdresser of Safe Harbor, that’s exactly what she does. Not just because Lily desperately needs the harbor of Safe Harbor, but because Rose is finally starting to scrabble at the walls of her self-isolation. And because she sees in Lily’s lonely aloneness something of herself that she hasn’t let herself see in a long time.

In letting Safe Harbor shelter them both, Lily and Rose both find the space they need to stand up and live.

Escape Rating B+:The blurb makes it seem as if Lily and Rose form an instant, albeit unlikely, friendship, but that’s not exactly what happens. In fact, it seems like this one tries to build its relationships in all kinds of slightly unconventional ways, and that the book is the better for its off-beat notes.

Lily’s desperate straits have to do with the husband who moved her to a place where neither of them knew a soul and then woke up one morning and left her divorce papers on the kitchen table as he seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. But Lily’s not desperately lovesick trying to get him back. She doesn’t even want him back after that – and who can blame her? (Besides her overbearing mother-in-law, that is.) Rather, she’s left with a mess and is just digging her way out, with no support network, no job and about to be evicted from a rental house that came with his job – which he has also fled.

It’s unusual for this kind of story that he wasn’t abusive, she’s not pregnant and she’s not a suddenly single mother. She’s just temporarily adrift and very much alone. She knows she can get back on her feet, she just needs a bit of time and space in which to do that, which is what makes her call Rose about the job doing the one thing she’s always loved, using the gift she inherited from her late mother – cutting hair and providing a place for people to set down their burdens for a bit and come out feeling better. (I’m not saying that a story like this one can’t be excellent with some of those usual starting points, but it is terrific to see one that does it just a bit differently for a change!)

But in giving Lily a chance to recover, Rose also manages to give herself a chance to take a new look at the world around her, and set down some of the burdens that she’s been carrying entirely too long. Since she was Lily’s age. And the story of Rose’s re-awakening is every bit as lovely as that of Lily’s awakening.

That both of them manage to find happiness, community and love in the place where they have found themselves planted is the icing on a very heartwarming cake, and makes for an absolutely delightful story.

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Review: Out of Body by Jeffrey Ford

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Out of Body by Jeffrey FordOut of Body by Jeffrey Ford
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror
Pages: 176
Published by Tor.com on May 26, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A small-town librarian witnesses a murder at his local deli, and what had been routine sleep paralysis begins to transform into something far more disturbing. The trauma of holding a dying girl in his arms drives him out of his own body. The town he knows so well is suddenly revealed to him from a whole new perspective. Secrets are everywhere and demons fester behind closed doors.

Worst of all, he discovers a serial killer who has been preying on the area for over a century, one capable of traveling with him through his dreams.

My Review:

I think I picked this book for the title. I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to be out of my body, so the concept of having a fictional OBE (out of body experience) was especially appealing. Also, the protagonist is a librarian, in the sort of library that we all imagine but don’t generally see anymore – if they ever really existed – so it felt like kind of a win-win.

And I’ve been flirting with reading a bit more horror, so this looked like it would hit a kind of trifecta. As it did. Even though the blurb doesn’t actually do this one justice. Or describe it terribly well, now that I think about it.

Poor Owen witnesses the death of a young woman while picking up his routine morning coffee and a sweet roll at the mom-and-pop deli where she works. The mom and pop being the victim’s own mom and pop.

The killer pistol whips Owen and shoots her in cold blood for the not nearly enough money in the till to make the whole thing worthwhile as far as a robbery goes. She’s killed while Owen is unconscious after that pistol whipping. So she doesn’t exactly die in his arms.

But once Owen checks himself out of the local hospital he discovers that the incident has left him with more than the nightmares one might expect. He discovers an ability to travel out of his own body while he’s sleeping.

That’s where the real nightmare begins, as Owen discovers that he’s not the only person wandering around outside of his own body, passing through doors and walls and peeping on his neighbors. He finds a mentor who teaches him about, not just the wonders of dream walking, but about the dangers of the things that don’t even make a bump when they terrorize the night.

Escape Rating B: This one gets off to a slow start, not that the murder isn’t a bit of a kickstart. But our protagonist, poor Owen, is not just the local librarian but honestly a cliche of a librarian – except for his being male. He’s shy, introverted, a bit of a milquetoast, thinks of himself as a coward and leads an extremely boring life. In reality, we’re way more interesting and fun than that.

He’s also a bit of a sad sack, as his library and the neighboring libraries, all tiny libraries serving small communities, are being combined into a bigger – and hopefully better – institution serving a wider area. While one’s opinion on whether bigger really IS better, etc., etc., may vary, this is a done deal and Owen’s response is to wallow in his obsolescence. At the grand age of 35.

Once Owen starts night walking, he discovers a fascinating new world with the help of his mentor Melody. Who he has never met in person and has no plans to meet. But the world she introduces him to has wonders and terrors in equal measure, from the fun of bounding across the landscape in giant steps that seem to reach the moon, to the terror of discovering that there are beings who walk the night that can kill them. For reals.

But the true terror comes on them slowly. At first they believe that an old man is being targeted by the same gang that killed the girl in the deli. That’s bad enough. Then they learn that the old man is a monster out of legend, and that he’s been picking off the townspeople for miles around. For at least a century. And storing them in his basement.

And that they are next.

While the descriptions of the basement storage are horrific and gruesome and send chills up the spine, what really stands out is the terror of the cat and mouse game Owen and Melody play with the monster. They each plan to end the other. The winner survives. The loser will die quietly in their sleep. Or worse.

In spite of that slow beginning, this is what I was expecting horror to be. For someone who doesn’t read a lot of horror, the short length worked extremely well. I got just enough to be truly chilled without having it go on so long that I either gave up or turned away.

A chilling time was definitely had by all!