Source: purchased from Amazon

Review: The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Governess Affair by Courtney MilanThe Governess Affair (Brothers Sinister, #0.5) by Courtney Milan
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical romance
Series: Brothers Sinister #0.5
Pages: 96
Published by Courtney Milan on April 21st 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

She will not give up. Three months ago, governess Serena Barton was let go from her position. Unable to find new work, she's demanding compensation from the man who got her sacked: a petty, selfish, swinish duke. But it's not the duke she fears. It's his merciless man of business -- the man known as the Wolf of Clermont. The formidable former pugilist has a black reputation for handling all the duke's dirty business, and when the duke turns her case over to him, she doesn't stand a chance. But she can't stop trying -- not with her entire future at stake.He cannot give in.Hugo Marshall is a man of ruthless ambition -- a characteristic that has served him well, elevating the coal miner's son to the right hand man of a duke. When his employer orders him to get rid of the pestering governess by fair means or foul, it's just another day at the office. Unfortunately, fair means don't work on Serena, and as he comes to know her, he discovers that he can't bear to use foul ones. But everything he has worked for depends upon seeing her gone. He'll have to choose between the life that he needs, and the woman he is coming to love... The Governess Affair is a novella of about 32,500 words.

My Review:

Courtney Milan is an author who has been highly recommended to me on multiple occasions. After reading The Governess Affair I certainly understand why.

This wasn’t quite what I expected based on the blurb – but in a good way. I haven’t been reading as much romance as I used to, particularly historical romance, because the characters and the situation have become increasingly difficult to identify with. Love may conquer a lot, but it doesn’t conquer ALL.

Heroines with agency often feel anachronistic, while heroines without agency just aren’t worth bothering with.

But The Governess Affair was an extremely pleasant surprise. Heroine Serena Barton has grabbed her agency with both hands and is hanging onto it as if it is her only hope – because it is. Even though the deck is stacked high against her from the very beginning, she never lets go. At the same time the way that she takes that agency feels like it fits into her time and place. Because what she is demanding is her due in that time and place – no more and no less.

The hero, Hugo Marshall, is every bit as fascinating because he’s the kind of person that we know must have existed but doesn’t usually find himself the hero of a romance. He’s not particularly handsome. Not that he’s ugly either, just that he’s relatively ordinary.

He’s definitely not an aristocrat. In fact, the aristocrat is the villain of this piece and deservedly so.

Instead, Hugo Marshall works for a living. Admittedly he begins the story as the villainous aristocrat’s “fixer”, but it is definitely work. Hugo’s not striving for a life of idle luxury, just enough money and contacts to stake himself in business. He’s ambitious, hard-working and just plain hard. (Take that wherever your imagination wants to go)

But Serena has made herself a problem for Hugo’s employer. It’s Hugo’s job to eliminate his employer’s problems – one way or another.

He doesn’t resort to murder. It’s not that kind of problem elimination. Hugo’s usual methods are payoffs and ruination.

The problem is that Serena doesn’t want a small payoff because it won’t be enough to fix HER problems. And he really can’t ruin her because his employer has already done that.

And Hugo discovers that he can’t bring himself to do it again – no matter how much his own future rides on the outcome.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve had this book in my virtually towering TBR pile for almost seven years. It zoomed to the top of that rather large pile this week when the news of the dumpster fire at the Romance Writers of America broke on Xmas Eve. It’s a story of WTF’ery, of tone policing, of organizational idiocy, of having no clue about the way that social media works on the eve of 2020, and of trying to lock the barn door after the horse has gone while attempting to pretend that there was never a horse in the first place AND blaming the jockey for raising the alarm about the missing equine. A brief summary – with documents – can be found at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. The TL;DR version is that RWA officially blamed an author of color for calling out racism in the industry and pretty much the entire industry except the pearl-clutchers clapped back. HARD. Courtney Milan is the author blamed for calling out her own experience. So I wanted to send love both in the form of a review of something I had already purchased and the purchase of something new.

Which led to a deep dive into that TBR stack to see what I had on tap. And this is one of the things I had, the prequel novella in her Brothers Sinister series (The entire rest of the series was the purchase of something new). And it was a lovely read.

As is obvious from my comments above the rating, I liked both Serena and Hugh very much. And I’m saying that even though Serena’s predicament isn’t one I usually have much interest in reading about. Because the story isn’t ABOUT her pregnancy. It’s about her taking her future in her own hands and standing up for her own self in a society that expects her to do neither.

And I loved her internal voice, that she’s standing up NOW because she didn’t stand up then. She gave up her own voice once and it cost her dearly. She refuses to do it again – no matter what follows.

I found the relationship between her and her sister Freddy fascinating on multiple levels, and not just because Freddy clearly has agoraphobia. The way that the sisters love each other, support each other and have absolutely no understanding of each other all at the same time feels so real. I identify with Serena’s position completely while still being able to see where Freddy is coming from – even knowing that she would drive me bonkers too.

Hugh’s aspirations and his work ethic make him a different kind of hero for a story set in England in the immediate post-Regency period. The only member of the aristocracy we really see is Hugh’s employer, who is essentially the rotter that kicks off the whole story. He doesn’t get nearly as much as he deserves. What I loved about the story is that, at least in Hugh’s internal voice, the glitter of the Regency is exposed for the sham it was – or at least the sham the “nobility” were.

The romance between Serena and Hugh is an enemies into lovers romance that sparkles with wit and banter. They fall in love by talking to each other with both of their keen intellects on display at every turn.

I also loved the way that Hugh helped Serena get past her trauma. The sensitivity of that scene reminded me very much – and very favorably – of a similar occurrence in Lady Abigail’s Perfect Match.

The end of The Governess Affair is a teaser for the first complete novel in the Brothers Sinister series, The Duchess War. And at the end of my reading of The Governess Affair, while I decry the reason I found myself hunting this book up, I’m glad that I finally did.

Review: Alice Payne Arrives by Kate Heartfield

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Alice Payne Arrives by Kate HeartfieldAlice Payne Arrives (Alice Payne, #1) by Kate Heartfield
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alternate history, science fiction, steampunk, time travel
Series: Alice Payne #1
Pages: 171
Published by Tor.com on November 6, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A disillusioned major, a highwaywoman, and a war raging across time.

It’s 1788 and Alice Payne is the notorious highway robber, the Holy Ghost. Aided by her trusty automaton, Laverna, the Holy Ghost is feared by all who own a heavy purse.

It’s 1889 and Major Prudence Zuniga is once again attempting to change history―to save history―but seventy attempts later she’s still no closer to her goal.

It’s 2016 and . . . well, the less said about 2016 the better!

But in 2020 the Farmers and the Guides are locked in battle; time is their battleground, and the world is their prize. Only something new can change the course of the war. Or someone new.

Little did they know, but they’ve all been waiting until Alice Payne arrives.

My Review:

The problem with wanting to change things is that things change. The road to Hell is always paved with good intentions. The problem with humanity is, well, humans.

And wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey bits have a way of biting everyone in the ass – every single time.

Time travel has always been an irresistible idea for SF and other genres to play with and things always seem to turn out alright in the end. For values of “alright” that seem to be relatively definable. Or at least reasonably fixable.

The time travel in Alice Payne’s version of history – or rather versions of history – turns out to be not nearly so simple. Or half so easily fixable. And it makes so much sense – in a really, really horrible sort of way.

It all goes back to that road to Hell and those good intentions. Mostly.

Some of the damage is already present. From the perspective of the future, global warming and a whole bunch of other crap that we’re already dealing with has sent the planet into a state of anarchy by the time that time travel is invented.

And then there was bureaucracy – a hell in itself – but a hell created with the noble goal of going back in time to make things better. The problem with that little idea is “who decides”? One person’s meat is another person’s poison. One person’s better is someone else’s worse. Not to mention that there is no universal definition of “better”. We all think we know, but the devil is in those terrible details. Which leads, directly and inexorably, to rival factions of time travelers – or perhaps that should be time meddlers – who are just absolutely certain that their way is the right way.

Also, there’s the issue that every writer of alternate history runs into. Once you flap the butterfly’s wings in a different direction or a different rhythm, the changes ripple out forever and in ways that were never expected. A change that looks good at the outset may lead to terrible consequences later.

“Millions will die who did not die in what would have been our history.” If that line sounds familiar, it’s what Spock tells Kirk in the TOS episode The City on the Edge of Forever when he realizes that the woman Kirk loves, the woman at the foundation of a peace movement, has to die so that her peace movement doesn’t delay the entry of the U.S. into World War II – allowing Hitler to rise to global dominion. The peace movement looked like a wonderful thing – and in another time and another place it might have been. But there and then the immediate good thing led to a terrible consequence. And the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few or of the one.

Prudence Zuniga in 2070 believes that it all has to end. That every attempt to change history “for the better” is only making things worse and rippling that worse further back into history. That it’s time to end the tinkering, let the chips fall where they may, and move forward and only forward into a single future – whatever it might be.

Not that she’s not going to make one last play to make sure that her faction of the history changers wins the “History Wars”. She just needs one person in 1788 to fix a few last minute details.

She plans to involve a tinkerer, but ends up with a highwayman – or rather a highwaywoman, Alice Payne. So Prudence changes her plans – just a bit. And finds herself in the midst of that old dilemma, the one about the problem with changing things is that things change.

And change, and change, and change.

Escape Rating B: Alice Payne’s ride has echoes and origins in many time travel stories, from Doctor Who to The Chronicles of St. Mary’s to The Anubis Gates to The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. But Alice Payne isn’t nearly so lighthearted as that dog.

The difference is that most of those stories try their damnedest not to change the history they explore. They kind of operate on a temporal version of the Prime Directive – to add in another Star Trek reference. They are trying NOT to change things and they do worry very much about the ‘grandfather paradox’.

What makes Alice Payne’s, or rather Prudence Zuniga’s, story feel so probable in its improbability is that no one is careful. It feels all too true to human nature that if the capability of time travel existed that it would be abused and only make things worse.

The story feels like it is set up to parallel the situations of Alice Payne and Prudence Zuniga. While the series is named after Alice, it feels like it is as much Prudence’s story – and more about Prudence’s time(s) and the mess that the world has gotten itself into than it is about Alice.

At the same time – so to speak – as a character Alice has more drive and ambition. And we get more inside her head – possibly because it’s a much less convoluted place that Prudence’s. After all, Alice knows who she is and what she’s doing and as far as she knows that doesn’t change. She’s in the late 1800s doing the best she can to hide her love for her friend Jane, dodge the amorous attentions of several disgusting men AND keep her family’s house halfway livable and her father out of debtor’s prison by posing as a highwayman and robbing the coaches of the aforementioned disgusting men.

Prudence is trying to stop time travel. Alice’s story is easy. It takes the reader a while to understand why Prudence feels like she needs to essentially commit treason – and we get enough to grasp what’s wrong by the tip of our reading fingernails without understanding it in quite as much depth as I’d like. The ending felt both a bit rushed and a bit of a tease for the next book in the series.

I’m quite teased. I’ll definitely be back to see where Alice Payne Rides take her – and us – next.

Review: The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran WildeThe Jewel and Her Lapidary (Gem Universe #1) by Fran Wilde
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Gem Universe #1
Pages: 96
Published by Tor.com on May 3, 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From Fran Wilde, the Andre Norton and Compton Crook Award-winning author of Updraft.

The kingdom in the Valley has long sheltered under the protection of its Jewels and Lapidaries, the people bound to singing gemstones with the power to reshape hills, move rivers, and warp minds. That power has kept the peace and tranquility, and the kingdom has flourished.

Jewel Lin and her Lapidary Sima may be the last to enjoy that peace.

The Jeweled Court has been betrayed. As screaming raiders sweep down from the mountains, and Lapidary servants shatter under the pressure, the last princess of the Valley will have to summon up a strength she’s never known. If she can assume her royal dignity, and if Sima can master the most dangerous gemstone in the land, they may be able to survive.

“The central fantastical idea is pretty cool… nicely written… I suspect the world it’s set in might yield more fine stories.” – Locus

My Review:

I was looking for something with some adventure – with either a fantasy or SF bent. And I was looking for something short. Which left me trolling the Tor.com backlist because I knew I’d find something good that would take care of all my wants – at least of the brief and bookish type.

Which led to me The Jewel and Her Lapidary – along with a few other gems.

So much story gets told here. Through the dynamic between Lin and Sima, and their own internal dialogs, we get just enough background to understand why they and their kingdom has come to this terrible pass – and just how little anyone would expect them to do about it.

They are supposed to be royal, young and submissive. Coddled youngest children considered too weak and too female to do anything but submit to their fate as conquered property of a warlord. Too cowed to do anything but obey and be subjugated – along with their people.

Instead, they fight back. Not as warriors, because they are neither of them that. But with what weapons they have. Brains, cunning, the underestimation of their enemies. And love. Love for those who came before them. Love for their country. Love for each other.

This is a story of triumph not by conquest but by endurance. And it is absolutely a gem. It’s also about gems. And about power and control and love and sacrifice and a whole lot else – packed into a tiny, sparkling package. Like a gem.

Escape Rating A-: This story is probably the shortest epic fantasy ever written. And it doesn’t seem to sacrifice anything for its tiny length. Not that I wouldn’t have loved to have had more backstory and character building and setup and everything – because I always want more of all of those things. And not that I’m not hoping to get more of those things from the next book in the series, The Fire Opal Mechanism. Because I certainly am.

However, we learn what we need to learn about the Jewel Lin, her Lapidary Sima, how they found themselves and their kingdom in the terrible situation that they are in – and just how much they will have to sacrifice to save what they can. This is one of those stories where there really is a fate worse than death – and it’s a fate that these two young women are determined to prevent at all costs.

This is an epic where the victory is not in a big battle with brave warriors – but instead won by quiet sacrifice – all alone in the dark.

This story, short thought it may be, still manages to be complete and heart wrenching in and of its tiny little self. And that’s pretty awesome.

Guest Review: Hard Duty by Mark E. Cooper

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: Hard Duty by Mark E. CooperHard Duty (Merkiaari Wars #1) by Mark E. Cooper
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: military science fiction, science fiction
Series: Merkiaari Wars #1
Pages: 388
Published by Impulse Books UK on August 20, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Humanity's last encounter with aliens saw sixteen point two billion people killed in a war with the Merkiaari that had spanned decades.

Two hundred years later, the Alliance is cautiously exploring beyond its borders again, but the survey corp. is considered a mere gesture by some. General Burgton of the 501st Infantry Regiment believes a lack of expansion is leading the Alliance into stagnation. So when one small ship discovers a new alien race, it should be an easy decision to make contact, but what if the aliens are like the Merkiaari?

Captain Jeff Colgan of the survey ship ASN Canada is at the tip of the spear. His ship made the discovery, his crew's lives are on the line, and his decisions will decide the outcome. Will the Alliance make new friends or will he be responsible for another sixteen billion deaths? When the aliens discover his ship and begin hunting him through their system, his mission changes from one of study to one of survival.

Guest Review by Amy:

Two hundred years ago, when humankind met the Merkiaari, it resulted in over sixteen billion deaths, and an enduring fear of space exploration. Now, as humankind reaches out into the darkness once more, they’re more careful about it. When Jeff Colgan’s ship, the ASN Canada, hears a radio transmission of unknown origin, they have to investigate – carefully.

If it’s the Merki, that’s really bad, of course. If it’s not their mysterious, hated enemy, then they have to find out if they are as bad or worse. If not that, then they need to convince this other race to not be so noisy, so as not to attract the Merkiaari’s attention!

Escape Rating: B: There’s a lot going on in this book. Besides the viewpoint of the Alliance folks who have discovered the new race (they call themselves the Shan), we spend a fair amount of time exploring their lives. Meanwhile, in another part of the galaxy, seemingly unconnected with this drama out in the hinterlands, we have a Viper at work. Vipers are the souped-up humans who made it possible to defeat the Merkiaari back when, we’re told, and many of them still work for the Alliance now, as our man Eric does. Eric’s on a mission, to infiltrate a guerrilla movement on some planet that is trying to decide if they should join the Alliance – I think?

It’s very confusing, having this one plot line that doesn’t seem connected to the other two. What redeemed this book for me was that all three are colorfully written stories in their own right, any one of which I’d be happy to read. Eric’s Viper story is certainly action-packed and engaging, but I don’t see a lot of connection between it and the first-contact situation with the Shan. The disparate stories at work here distract somewhat from the otherwise high quality of the work, and having both ends of the galaxy end the book on hairy cliffhangers was a little bit off-putting.

One of the most-impressive parts of this book, for me, was the new race, the Shan. They’re technologically advanced, yet still have a jungle-predator culture, in many ways. Cooper’s descriptions of these beings, their relationships and their culture are all richly described, and the first-contact scenario could easily have come out of any of Star Trek‘s incarnations without looking like a misfit. The stress on the scenario of needing to stay hidden from the Merkiaari adds some good tension to this plot line, and kept me reading through to the tantalizing end.

I’m still left wondering what the point of the Viper plot line was, but there are seven books planned in this series, so perhaps Mark Cooper will make things clearer in later books.

Hard sci-fi: check! Adventure: check! Cloak-and-dagger: check! First contact with alien race: check! Satisfaction: …not so much.

Review: The Girl Who Reads on the Metro by Christine Feret-Fleury

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Girl Who Reads on the Metro by Christine Feret-FleuryThe Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Féret-Fleury
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 175
Published by Flatiron Books on October 8, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In the vein of Amelie and The Little Paris Bookshop, a modern fairytale about a French woman whose life is turned upside down when she meets a reclusive bookseller and his young daughter.

Juliette leads a perfectly ordinary life in Paris, working a slow office job, dating a string of not-quite-right men, and fighting off melancholy. The only bright spots in her day are her metro rides across the city and the stories she dreams up about the strangers reading books across from her: the old lady, the math student, the amateur ornithologist, the woman in love, the girl who always tears up at page 247.

One morning, avoiding the office for as long as she can, Juliette finds herself on a new block, in front of a rusty gate wedged open with a book. Unable to resist, Juliette walks through, into the bizarre and enchanting lives of Soliman and his young daughter, Zaide. Before she realizes entirely what is happening, Juliette agrees to become a passeur, Soliman's name for the booksellers he hires to take stacks of used books out of his store and into the world, using their imagination and intuition to match books with readers. Suddenly, Juliette's daydreaming becomes her reality, and when Soliman asks her to move in to their store to take care of Zaide while he goes away, she has to decide if she is ready to throw herself headfirst into this new life.

Big-hearted, funny, and gloriously zany, The Girl Who Reads on the Metro is a delayed coming-of-age story about a young woman who dares to change her life, and a celebration of the power of books to unite us all.

My Review:

There’s a power in stories, and not just the ones that last. There’s magic in books, and not just the ones that stand the test of time. The Girl Who Reads on the Métro is a charming tale of a young woman who takes that power and uses that magic to finally begin a story of her very own – a story not limited to between the pages of a book.

This is a story that invokes feels rather than thoughts – until it settles into your psyche and generates lots of thoughts. All the thoughts.

The plot is rather simple. Juliette lives a small life in the “real” but a large life within the pages of books. And she’s too shy, or scared, or too deeply programmed to even think about trading the one for the another.

She just knows she’s not truly happy. But she’s not really unhappy, either. She’s just going through the motions.

Until one morning when she meanders her way to work instead of taking the straight and narrow path and finds herself in an extremely eclectic bookstore – and at the edge of a brand new life.

Juliette has always made up stories about the people she sees reading on the Métro. Soliman and his Book Depot give her a mission – to take books from the Depot and find exactly the right person to give them to.

It’s a calling – one that takes Juliette out of her comfort zone and into the Book Depot full-time when Soliman needs someone to take care of his daughter while he goes on a mysterious journey.

But just as Juliette and the other book passers of the Book Depot find the person who needs to read each book, Soliman has found the right person to take over the Depot in Juliette. Right for her and right for the Depot.

She takes it on a new adventure – and it most definitely takes her.

Escape Rating A-: This is one of those little books that sticks with you after its done – sort of like the way that the books that Juliette gives away stick with the people she gives them to.

In spite of being set in Paris, this isn’t really a book about Paris. The focus is very tight on Juliette’s small life, her daily ride on the Métro, and her journey of discovery in, by and for the Book Depot. There really isn’t a lot about the feel of the city, so It could be any city big enough to have a well functioning commuter system. The Chicago ‘L’ would serve as well as the Paris Métro, and there are plenty of unlikely and untidy corners of that great city to house a magical bookshop like the Book Depot. And it doesn’t matter, because this isn’t about the location of the Book Depot. It’s about the magic of the Book Depot.

It’s possible to interpret this story as a paean to the physical book. Certainly the physicality of books is part of what Juliette – and many other people – love about them. The way that they absorb the atmosphere and even the aroma of the places and people who keep them – and the way that they hold their own history within the leaves of their pages and tucked inside their bent spines.

At the same time, this feels like it’s more about the power of story to change a life. The lives of the people that the passers pass those books to, and especially the power to change Juliette’s own. The right story at the right time can move mountains – or at least shift the hardest heart. And that doesn’t have to be the printed book – it’s the story that matters.

But books as artifacts are sure a lot easier to pass around. There’s always a magic in connecting the right person with the right story at the right time. After all, that’s one of the reasons that librarians do what they do.

The Girl Who Reads on the Métro is a charming story of a young woman gathering her courage to begin writing her own story – while sharing the books she loves with as many others as possible. Including the reader – as Juliette’s own list of books to pass to that reader is an extensive tease of possibilities – just like her story.

Guest Review: Accidentally Yours by Bettye Griffin

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: Accidentally Yours by Bettye GriffinAccidentally Yours by Bettye Griffin
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 288
Published by Bunderful Books on August 6, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A romantic comedy available for the first time as an eBook (originally published under the title Prelude to a Kiss)...

Vivian St. James, facing both a new millennium and her thirty-fifth birthday, vows that this will be her last New Year's Eve spent at home in front of the TV. Determined to meet her Mr. Right, she throws herself into an avid social life, attending events all over the greater New York metropolitan area in search of her dream man. While successful in her quest to meet potential mates, soon an unfortunate pattern develops as accidents or sudden illnesses befall her candidates, one by one. To her chagrin, the treating physician on duty is always the handsome Dr. Zachary Warner...

ER physician Zack Warner finds himself captivated by the dark-skinned beauty who presents to the ER accompanying an injured date. But the presence of her escort makes it impossible to act on his attraction, and when she leaves the facility he figures he'll never see her again. But their paths do cross again, as he is called on to treat Vivian's companions. As the injuries pile up, he good-naturedly ribs her about her unfortunate effect on the men she dates, all the while longing to have her attentions for himself. His making light of her increasingly worrisome situation does anything but endear him to a mortified Vivian, who wonders if she's some kind of jinx. But then Zack finds himself on the casualty list...and their uneasy relationship takes a new, easy, turn that surprises them both...

Guest Review by Amy:

HR executive Vivian St. James is sneaking up on 35, and still single. Dates just don’t work out, going at it the way she has been. So she gets involved in events all over New York, trying to find Mr. Right. Somehow, the guys she ends up meeting keep getting hurt, and she takes them to the ER, where she keeps bumping into physician Zach Warner. Jinx? Or is the universe trying to tell her something?

Escape Rating: A: This story was originally published by Harlequin in 2001, as Prelude to a Kiss.  A couple of things stood out as differences: a) the cover of the later publication did not make it obvious that this story featured African-American characters, and b) the new title is much more interesting and true to the story. Some reviewers, apparently ones who read Accidentally Yours, kvetched about the fact they didn’t realize until they were well into the story that all the main characters were persons-of-color. One critic frothed that they were “1/4 of the way through” before they figured it out.  To them, I say, “pishantosh.” It’s made clear quite early on, and the mental shift that I had to go through as a white woman — we make characters in our own image, after all — was refreshing to me.

Bettye Griffin has given us a fun little rom-com tale here. There’s a fair bit going on; we meet Vivian’s best friend, her neighbors, her parents, and a series of guys that she dates (and takes to the ER) along the way. She’s not really a jinx, of course, those guys were just unlucky, and stuff happens. There’s almost a comedy-of-errors flavor going on in this book. It’s glaringly obvious from the outset that Zach is the Mr. Right that Vivian is looking for, naturally. Zach and his buddy (who is the fiancee of one of Vivian’s close friends) turn out to be Vivian’s landlords, but no one’s telling anyone that they know this, they’re both just circling around and thinking surely the other has better things going on. But when Zach falls and sprains his ankle, and Vivian runs him to the ER, things take a turn. His brownstone is full of steps, as brownstones tend to be, so he ends up staying on her sofa for the week.

Things could have gotten hot at that point in the story, but Griffin throws us a knuckleball, and they don’t. Zach and Vivian have both discovered that they kinda like the domesticity of “being together,” but still don’t quite manage to bring things together. A few weeks later, they’re both on safari vacations — and bump into each other there, quite unexpectedly. Sparks fly, and when they get back to New York, they go on a date, then don’t see each other for a couple of weeks before flying out together to go to Desireé and Austin’s wedding. Ever the gentleman, he gets them a lovely suite for their stay in Denver. The comedy-of-errors continues, but I shan’t spill all the details. There’s some pretty intense tension in this book, and when it finally gets resolved, it does so beautifully, with two people who have fallen pretty hard for each other, just taking a while to realize it. The book trips along blissfully to the utterly-predictable ending.

Serious read? Absolutely not. Fun romp of a romance? Totally.

Guest Review: Clone Hunter by Victor Methos

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: Clone Hunter by Victor MethosClone Hunter by Victor Methos
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook
Genres: science fiction
Series: Clone Rebellion Chronicles #1
Pages: 366
Published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform on August 19, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Born in a laboratory for war or pleasure, they live as slaves, unable to fight those that oppress them . . . all, except one.

A single clone is no longer willing to live in slavery and has declared war on those that would subjugate her.

Hunted by the most powerful men in existence and a threat to the social order, if she wants her freedom she must fight her way through bounty hunters, war machines, and the deadliest enemy of all: her own kind . . .

Guest Review by Amy:

Clones were created quite some time back, to be super-soldiers. But what do you do with your super-soldiers when the war is over? It’s a theme that’s been explored again and again, and in this case, the clones become — servants. Slaves. It’s a problem that won’t last forever, you see, because they can’t breed.

Except, at least one can. The Powers That Be want her dead, and trying to gun her down with a human assassin just won’t work, so they program and send one of her own. And there’s a clone rebellion brewing, to top it off.

Escape Rating C: We have here a sci-fi action/adventure, with a premise that fans of the genre have seen more than once, I’m sure. And to tell the truth, I was looking forward to seeing how this variation got handled.

There’s action a-plenty, with enough plot twists to keep me reading through a three-hour flight, and the cast of characters are all pretty interesting people in their own right. It’s a bit unclear who the heroes and villains are at the outset, and to my mind, it’s never entirely certain who the “good guys” are, or if they’ll save the day. The clones are fighting a one-world-government for their freedom, and apparently there are more than a few who could breed, given the opportunity, and there’s a big-time planetbuster bomb hidden away somewhere…

I wanted to say I enjoyed this book, and indeed, it has all the ingredients for a tasty, straightforward sci-fi read. But it has some rather-massive mechanical problems, in my mind. First off, we see the world from no less than five different viewpoints during the book. Yes, each chapter was titled with the name of the person whose head we’re inhabiting, but after a while, it got a little tiring, with all the switchee-swapee. Additionally, since we frequently cover the same event from two (or more!) viewpoints, it comes off as repetitive and tiring, especially since those events are often the most-violent in the book.

If we’d seen snippets of things that interlaced and came together for one big finale, as in John M. Ford’s How Much for Just the Planet? I’d have been a lot happier with this interaction. (Editor’sNote: John M. Ford was a genius who didn’t write nearly enough and was taken much too soon.) While that story was a multiple point-of-view comedy-of-errors (in the Star Trek universe!) that led us to a hilarious conclusion, this one was just an error, without any comedy, and with a whole lot of seriously savage killing and violence replayed for us, over and over. Methos’ habit of multiple first-person views result in an awful lot of sentences starting with “I,” and frankly, it makes the multiple point-of-view construction of the book come off as cheap and poorly written.

There are apparently more books set in this world, but I won’t be hunting them down for a read. This book and the series from which it comes might be your cup of tea, but it wasn’t mine, regrettably.

 

Review: Jade War by Fonda Lee

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Jade War by Fonda LeeJade War (The Green Bone Saga, #2) by Fonda Lee
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: urban fantasy
Series: Green Bone Saga #2
Pages: 590
Published by Orbit on July 23, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In Jade War, the sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Jade City, the Kaul siblings battle rival clans for honor and control over an Asia-inspired fantasy metropolis.

On the island of Kekon, the Kaul family is locked in a violent feud for control of the capital city and the supply of magical jade that endows trained Green Bone warriors with supernatural powers they alone have possessed for hundreds of years.

Beyond Kekon's borders, war is brewing. Powerful foreign governments and mercenary criminal kingpins alike turn their eyes on the island nation. Jade, Kekon's most prized resource, could make them rich - or give them the edge they'd need to topple their rivals.

Faced with threats on all sides, the Kaul family is forced to form new and dangerous alliances, confront enemies in the darkest streets and the tallest office towers, and put honor aside in order to do whatever it takes to ensure their own survival - and that of all the Green Bones of Kekon.

Jade War is the second book of the Green Bone Saga, an epic trilogy about family, honor, and those who live and die by the ancient laws of blood and jade.

My Review:

I picked up Jade War just about the minute I finished the absolutely awesome Jade City. And then I couldn’t stop, to the point where I bought the ebook just so I could seamlessly switch between the audio and the text. The only problem is that I finished it very quickly and now, well now I really, really want to go back to Kekon, and I can’t until Jade Legacy comes out – maybe next year and maybe the year after. The story is marvelous, but the book hangover is truly terrible.

Kekon and the story of the Green Bone Saga seem to have gotten into my blood – or infected my brain. Not unlike the bioenergetic jade that infuses the culture of Kekon and underlies everything that happens in this epic saga.

Although Jade War expands upon and opens up the story that was begun in Jade City, like its predecessor, it also takes one act and brings it full circle. Jade War begins when Emory Anden, cousin and adopted son of the Kaul family of the No Peak clan, is exiled from his home in Kekon after refusing to wear jade and take up the life of a green bone that is expected of him. The story closes when Anden returns from his exile, picks up his jade, but finds a different path than the one that was originally laid out for him.

A big part of the story of this book is the making of Anden into his own man – but his part is told far from home, and uses his exile to tell the story of Kekon’s influence on the wider world – and that wider world’s influence on Kekon. Whether Kekon wants those effects or not.

Anden is not the only character that we watch grow and change during the course of the story. Watching the world change, both for him and for Kekon, draws the reader into the story in a way that just doesn’t let you out at the end.

And it’s enthralling and compelling every step of the way.

Escape Rating A+++: As I said at the beginning, this is a book that I both read and listened to, in equal turns. I couldn’t put it down and didn’t want to let it go – and I still don’t. I felt compelled to find out what happened next – and at the same time I’m devastated that it’s over – at least for the moment. I want to go back. Kekon and it’s world isn’t just a story – it felt like a place that breathed and lived.

Jade War both expands the story that began in Jade City and strengthens in central focus. It is, ironically both a bigger story and a more intimate one at the same time. The story of Jade City is insular, taking place almost in its entirety in the city of Janloon, and focusing on the growing tension between the two rival clans.

The first book featured Kaul Lan, the leader, or Pillar, of the No Peak clan. Lan was a reactive leader and not, unfortunately for him and his family, a proactive one. Lan’s tragedy was that he was a well-suited to be a peacetime Pillar, but he was faced with a clever and extremely proactive enemy in the Pillar of the Mountain, Ayt Mada. And Ayt Mada had been planning behind the scenes for years to propel No Peak into a war that she expected to win.

But no plan survives engagement with the enemy, and that turned out to be especially true for the Mountain’s plans for No Peak. Ayt’s maneuvers were intended to bring about the death of Lan’s brother Hilo, the head of No Peak’s enforcement arm. Without his warrior brother at his side, Lan would have sued for peace and accepted the subjugation of his clan sooner or later.

But all that plotting and planning brought about the consequence that Ayt Mada desired least. Instead of the reactive and passive Lan, now the active and vengeful Hilo leads No Peak, with his brilliant sister Shae at his side as Weather Man. And together they are more than a match for their enemies both at home and abroad.

Two heads really are better than one, particularly when each has strengths that the other lacks and they respect those strengths. They know they are stronger together than they are separately, even when they butt heads – as they regularly do.

Jade War is a bigger story than Jade City because the action expands outward. No Peak and the Mountain are still at war with each other, although the war mostly turns from a hot war to a cold one as Kekon is forced to turn its gaze outward. The major powers of this world, of which Kekon is explicitly not one, are conducting a hot war of their own not nearly far enough away. Kekon’s strategic allies put pressure on the country, forcing the rival clans to conduct their internal rivalry more strategically. Meaning fewer guns and duels, and more economic warfare conducted through proxies instead.

As well as a war for public opinion. No Peak courts the outside world, as symbolized by Anden’s exile to Kekon’s ally Espenia, while the Mountain gins up nationalistic fervor at home. And Anden has a front row seat to watch how that proxy fight plays out among the Kekonese immigrant community far from their island home.

But the story is also more intimate in that the reader sees more closely into the lives and minds of, not only Anden, but the two new leaders of No Peak, Lan’s younger brother Hilo, who has become Pillar in the wake of Lan’s death at the end of Jade City, and his sister Shae, the new CFO or Weather Man, who stepped up into the role after the betrayal of her predecessor.

They are young and mostly untried, and have to grow into their positions while the whole world watches. But they are more interesting to watch than Lan was. Both Hilo and Shae, out of a combination of desperation and their own styles of leadership are simply more proactive than their brother Lan ever would have been.

Their characters, especially Hilo, are more dynamic – and therefore more interesting to follow. They act rather than react, which means that they both push the action forward. Even when their actions are questionable – or downright morally reprehensible – they both err on the side of doing rather than sitting back and waiting for events to overtake them – not that THAT doesn’t occasionally happen anyway.

Jade War also takes this story of gangland warfare to a wider stage while telling a tale that provides standout roles for the women as well as the men of the clan AND adds a fascinating dose of world-wide political skulduggery to what was initially an urban fantasy about warring criminal organizations. The Green Bone Saga was a terrific story when it was confined to two families and one city. Now that it has gone world-wide, it is epic in every sense of the word. This is one of those books that just needs a higher grade than A+. Seriously, all the stars for this one.

Jade Legacy can’t come soon enough.

Guest Review: Sten by Chris Bunch & Allan Cole

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: Sten by Chris Bunch & Allan ColeSten by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch
Format: paperback
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure, science fiction, space opera
Series: Sten #1
Pages: 310
Published by Orbit on August 12th 1982
Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

This is the first book in the action-packed science fiction series, Sten. Vulcan is a factory planet, centuries old, company-run, ugly as sin, and unfeeling as death. Vulcan breeds just two types of native—complacent or tough. Sten is tough. When his family is killed in a mysterious accident, Sten rebels, harassing the Company from the metal world’s endless mazelike warrens. He could end up just another burnt-out Delinquent, but people like Sten never give up.

Guest review by Amy:

Karl Sten grew up on the industrial hellworld of Vulcan. His parents and siblings were all killed by the callous, uncaring machine-world they lived in, as a result of an industrial accident. Workers on Vulcan were on ironclad contracts that were rigged to give the Company the rest of a worker’s life. Until Sten rebelled. But escaping from Vulcan was only the first of his many adventures…

Escape Rating: A: Have you ever circled back to an old favorite from years ago, only to find out it’s not quite as good as you remember? I first read this book when I was in high school; it was originally published in 1982. The cover, back then, didn’t make it clear that this book was the first of the series, and I found it in a used bookstore, all by itself. I remember thinking, “wow, this is a great story–why don’t those guys write some more?” They did, of course, and the Sten series eventually spanned 8 books, all following Sten’s epic career after his departure from Vulcan. I didn’t find the others for a few years, but when I did, I hungrily devoured the whole series.

Now, when I say, “not quite as good as I remember,” I don’t mean to imply that Sten is a stinker–by no means! It’s a wonderful tale, fast-paced with lots of action and excitement, a cast of colorful characters, a villain that you can really love to despise, and enough hard sci-fi in there to keep geeks interested.

The Company’s boss, Baron Thoreson, is up to no good. He’s got a top-secret project that will, he hopes, let him control an even bigger chunk of the universe. He (rightly) understands that information is power – and once two people know something, it’s not a secret any more, it’s information. The Eternal Emperor is the sole holder of the secret of Anti-Matter Two, the molecule that powers…well, everything. It powers space ships, making interstellar travel possible, and can even be weaponized–the Imperial Guard’s primary weapon shoots tiny pellets of the stuff.

Sten, born on Vulcan and a teenager when our story starts, loses his family and takes up his father’s contract. He rapidly figures out just how rigged the system is, and he rebels, eventually escaping to lead a gang of juvenile criminals, the Delinqs. It’s there that the Emperor’s right-hand man Ian Mahoney finds Sten, while on an undercover mission to find out what the Baron is up to. Sten ends up leaving Vulcan, and joining the Imperial Guard. But Sten isn’t an infantry type – so after he washes out, Mahoney whisks him away to the top-secret Mercury Corps for deep intel work.

Sounds like a rollicking good adventure, right? Well, it is. There are fascinating people to meet at every phase of this story for Sten (and for us!), some great scenery, some cool tech, great battles…all the ingredients are here.

So what’s wrong with it? I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to figure that out. Sten moves really, really fast – and there’s the niggling thing that’s bothering me about it, and keeps it from being the great story I remember reading thirty-ish years ago. It moves too fast. In this first book, at least, we don’t really get into Sten’s head at all, though the bulk of the story centers on him. Things truck along, third-person with the camera pretty firmly pointed at Sten, and at the end, I’m wanting to dig deeper into this fascinating man.

So, I’ll take a minor point off for that. It’s possible that my familiarity with the book is part of what’s driving that odd feeling, so let’s not gig the book too badly. Others have called this a “hidden masterpiece” and an “underrated classic,” and I’ll buy that. For fans of hard military sci-fi, Sten is pure candy. Read and enjoy, then go see if you can find the rest of the series more quickly than I did!

Guest Review: H2O by Irving Belateche

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: H2O by Irving BelatecheH2O by Irving Belateche
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: dystopian, post apocalyptic, science fiction, thriller
Pages: 198
Published by Laurel Canyon Press on November 8, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Roy Walker is curious. But in a world where knowledge has disappeared, curiosity will get you killed.

Generations ago, the Passim Virus wiped out most of humanity. The survivors banded together to form the Territory and, now, decades later, no one questions why knowledge has disappeared. Why should they? They're lucky to be alive.

But Roy doesn't feel so lucky. He's haunted by the murder of his father and he's ostracized by everyone in town. He asks way too many questions, especially about the water pumped out by the town's desalination plant.

Then Roy finds a tantalizing clue that leads him down the coast of what used to be the state of Oregon. He's stunned at what he discovers. Everything in the Territory is a lie and everything around him is a front. But to uncover the dark secret behind this front, Roy must venture deeper into the wilderness where marauders and the deadly Passim Virus wait to kill.

It's there, outside the Territory, where he discovers the truth about his father's murder and where he meets his unexpected destiny -- To free humanity from the bondage of a powerful enemy.

Guest review by Amy:

Curiosity killed the cat, the old saying goes, though Roy Walker probably never has known that, since quite a lot of the vast body of human knowledge has been lost. Once the Passim Virus wiped out vast swaths of humanity, the survivors didn’t have time to… wait.

They didn’t have time to keep up a lot of the tools and technology that actually would have made surviving easier? Something doesn’t add up here.

Escape Rating: B+: I’m normally excited about post-apocalyptic adventure/thrillers; to me, it’s interesting to see how the author constructs their world. Does it look kind of like ours? What technologies develop in the ad hoc world after whatever-it-was-that-happened? What technology and culture falls by the wayside? Action, adventure, romance, all those things being in there are all a big plus to the central theme of “modern” humans trying to survive.

Author Irving Belateche has given us a slice of our own world, on the US West Coast, and quite a lot of it looks familiar. Houses, people, vehicles, even the desalination plant that our protagonist maintains, all look more-or-less normal. There are just lots of empty houses, and no one knows, really, what’s outside “the Territory,” and everyone’s scared to find out, because of the Virus.

To me, right from that point, this story has a problem for me. Humankind likes to connect, to explore, to get out there in the wild blue yonder and find things out. It’s what we do, and it’s made us the apex life form on this planet over the last several thousand years, and even gotten us into space.

To see a huge area of the United States cut itself off and be content with that strikes me as odd, right out of the gate. And a question in my mind from the get-go was “what happened to the libraries?” There are quite a few great big ‘uns along the Washington-Oregon-California coast; surely someone would have thought to go look for a computer repair manual in one of them? Or a copy of Programming Perl? Instead, we’re led to believe that writing software and maintaining computers are some magical voodoo that few can do–and, indeed, people are punished for doing so. As a software developer on my day job, and having worked with developers for thirty years, I’m just not buying this. Life, and software, always finds a way, to borrow loosely from Jurassic Park, but Belateche somehow wants us to believe that that’s not the case. Humanity’s vast banks of knowledge – libraries – are thoroughly ignored, not even mentioned once in the book.

I’ll let that go, for a moment, and suspend the big disbelief that threw me off-kilter here. The story itself has a lot of interesting points. There’s the worry about catching the Virus, the traveling without the “Fibs” (law enforcement) finding them, even a whiff of what could have eventually turned into some kind of love interest. Roy Walker is curious where all the water goes, naturally, since he maintains the water plant, and he knows it makes more than his local community could be using. That drives him to do something he shouldn’t (“finally! Someone acting like a real human,” Amy says to herself) and he goes to find out where all the water is going. At first, he thinks it’s corruption or some other criminal activity, but of course we’re given a deeper reason, and that is, in fact, why the Virus happened in the first place. There’s a decent adventure story under the hood here, and once Roy figures out what’s really going on, a straightforward redeem-humanity plot emerges from the earlier confusion. Our accidental hero is quite heroic, our villain suitably nasty, and the final confrontation satisfying.

Other people have liked this book a lot more than I did, from the reviews. My problem, as I noted above, is that it required a little more suspension of disbelief a little more than I was willing to give it. If that doesn’t present a problem for you, and you like post-apocalyptic stories, this one might be one you’d enjoy. It wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t a stinker, either.