If you pick and choose only a selection of the Amelia Peabody books to read, one of your choices must indisputably be Lion in the Valley, book 4 of the series. This introduces one of the most critical recurring characters to show up all throughout the books: as Amelia herself likes to call him, that genius of crime, the Master Criminal, Sethos.
Thanks to events of the previous book, The Mummy Case, Emerson has secured permission to dig at the Black Pyramid in Dahshur. But as is always the case with the Emersons, their efforts are soon enough interrupted. Someone attempts to kidnap Ramses–and the man who helps rescue him proves to be an opium-addicted Englishman. Moreover, there’s a young woman on the run from an accusation of murder, and anyone who’s read any other book of the series should be able to quickly guess that there’s backstory with these two side characters, too.
But really, the main interest of this installment is Sethos, particularly when his romantic interest in Amelia comes to light. Look for the big ending, when the Master Criminal gets his shot at his main goal. Which is to say, Amelia herself. This’ll set up a lot of lovely interaction for later installments, as well as occasional fun tension between Amelia and Emerson. Also, Sethos himself is a fabulous anti-hero, sure to appeal to any fan of rakish thieves and gentleman rogues. Four stars.
I was given Disturbed by Her Song as a review copy from Lethe Press, and I’ve got to say, this was one of the most unusual things I’ve read in a while. It’s a collection of short stories written by Tanith Lee, but under the conceit that two of her characters are actually writing the stories. “Esther Garber” and “Judas Garbah” are half-siblings, and each of them is gay. The stories Lee writes for them explore same-sex relationships, and she does a very impressive job giving each of the siblings a distinctive writing voice. I didn’t think I’d like the conceit of her “channeling” these characters; thankfully, though, that’s gotten quickly out of the way in the intro, and the stories themselves stand strongly on their own.
Judas’ stories I liked less than Esther’s, but I think this was mostly a question of them being generally darker of tone and not terribly happy. It is however a testament to Lee’s skill that I picked up the strong impression that Judas’ stories are perhaps intended to be partly autobiographical. Of the lot, I found “The Crow” most intriguing, in no small part because it’s got enough substance to it that it would reward a second reading to pick up on what I missed.
Esther’s stories on the other hand quite impressed me. It is here that Lee’s language frequently shone. While I couldn’t quite call this collection erotica, it is nonetheless very sensual, and Lee’s command of her words goes a long way towards making this work. There are particularly lyrical passages in “The X’s Are Not Kisses” and “Death and the Maiden”, for example.
But hands down, the title piece of this work is the best. “Disturbed By Her Song” is a deeply bittersweet story, tying beautifully in with the ancient tale referenced by its title. Like Judas’ stories in the collection, it is not particularly happy. But it’s definitely one that stays with you.
All that keeps me from giving this five stars is how Judas’ stories didn’t captivate me as much as Esther’s. That said: a very, very strong four stars.
Once you get into Book 3 of the Amelia Peabody series, The Mummy Case, you start picking up steam for the long haul of the bulk of all these books. Hands down, the best aspect of it is that Amelia and Emerson’s young son Ramses joins them for the first time in Egypt, and therefore starts taking his place as a primary character in the family’s adventures. Much like with Book 2, though, aside from Ramses starting to become his catastrophically precocious self, the rest of this story doesn’t stand out as much for me plot-wise. There’s certainly plenty of intrigue surrounding the murder of an antiquities dealer and the disappearance and reappearance of a mummy case, as well as the usual colorful cast of characters that populates any Amelia Peabody adventure.
What really sells this one for me, though, is all the character interaction–particularly with Ramses. He’s still too twee as of this book, what with Peters still writing out all his dialogue with a lisp–but he starts exhibiting the tendencies that make him quite the little holy terror for his parents to raise. The bit with the lion in this book, in particular, is gold. I also absolutely adore that Ramses, in emulation of his parents, carries out his own tiny excavation that turns out to be quite a bit more important than either of his parents expect. Four stars.
After the awesomeness that is Crocodile on the Sandbank, the mighty opening round of the Amelia Peabody series, a reader might wonder how Elizabeth Peters could possibly have packed more awesome into these books. The answer: by the introduction of Amelia and Emerson’s son, the “catastrophically precocious” Walter Peabody Emerson, better known by his nickname of Ramses.
The opening of this book remains one of my favorite bits in the entire series. It’s four years after the events of Book 1, and Amelia and Emerson have been staying at home in England raising their small son rather than risking him by a return to Egypt. In a quick little sequence of anecdotes, Amelia provides a delightful little portrait of exactly what this kid is like, from how he started to talk at a very early age to how he delighted in his father reading grisly accounts of mummies to him, and most of all in digging up bones out of the garden. He’s a bit too twee at this early age, though, as his dialogue is written out with some baby pronunication that makes him a bit hard to read. I was cheerfully willing to overlook that though for the giggle factor of young Ramses interrupting a tea party his mother is having–by bringing Amelia a particularly filthy femur, and horrifying all the other women present. Muaha.
Sadly, Ramses is not actually much in this book. The main gist of the plot involves one Lady Baskerville coming to beg Emerson for assistance, for her husband, himself a well-known excavator, has died in the middle of digging into a new tomb. Lady Baskerville wants Emerson to continue the job–and if at all possible, to investigate the mystery of her husband’s death and other strange circumstances that have surrounded their entire dig. And it’s certainly an entertaining mystery, notable for setting up a lot of the standard elements of an Amelia Peabody book: murder, a budding young romance, and someone (or multiple someones) being attracted passionately to Emerson! One other plot element is introduced here as well that will resonate through several of the following novels: the Emersons’ acqusition of the cat Bastet.
So even though the main plot doesn’t stand out for me as much as with the rest of the series, there are still a whole bunch of important things introduced here that set up books to come. For this one, four stars.
One of my all-time favorite authors is Elizabeth Peters, a.k.a. Barbara Michaels–and of her many, many works, my all-time favorite hands down is the Amelia Peabody series. Which starts off with a mighty roar in Crocodile on the Sandbank, a book I can go back to again and again. And do!
For those of you unfamiliar with the series, they’re the adventures of a husband and wife team of Egyptologists, set in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Book 1 introduces spinster Amelia Peabody, who has set out to tour Egypt following the death of her father and her inheritance of a quite credible fortune from him. During her travels, she takes lovely young Evelyn Forbes under her wing, and the two of them join forces to see the great sites of Egypt.
Cue introduction to the Emerson brothers, Walter and Radcliffe–though the latter detests his given name, and from this book and all throughout the series, he is known to the reader as simply Emerson. Walter’s a gentle and charming fellow, in direct contrast to his obstreperous brother. It should be no surprise to anyone that Evelyn takes to Walter, while Amelia herself clashes with Emerson. And this, my children, lays down the beginning of a long and lively relationship.
Amelia and Emerson are absolutely stunning together. Emerson is bullheaded, tactless, and rude, and has no patience whatsoever for interfering females–while Amelia will have absolutely none of this nonsense, and gives Emerson back every bit as good as he puts forth. That their relationship really gets underway when she has to nurse him out of severe illness should not be taken as anything so plebian as the standard “heroine must nurse hero back to health” romance trope–because Peters plays it splendidly.
As if this weren’t enough (and it’s quite a bit of awesome), there is of course a mystery to solve. Not long after Amelia and Evelyn take up with the Emersons, the dig site at which they’re working is visited by nothing less than what seems to be an ambulatory mummy. There’s murder, assault, and shady suitors. I love it all. I love it all so much. (heart)
The story’s written in first person, with the schtick that it’s the first of Amelia’s many journals, written during her lifetime. Peters gives her a very florid style (Amelia is quite fond of repeatedly mentioning Emerson’s “sapphirine” eyes, for example), but given that Peters is deliberately paying homage to H.R. Haggard and similar authors, it’s very much in theme for what she’s doing. So stick with it, and look out to the end for the inevitable proposal of marriage scene, which ranks as one of my favorite marriage proposals in a novel ever.
And trust me, it’s so very much not a spoiler that Amelia and Emerson get married. In fact, I adore that they go straight to getting married, and clear the way for the length of the series to focus on their married life and their adventures together. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that you can’t base a series on a married couple, folks–because Amelia and her beloved Emerson say otherwise. And you don’t want to argue with a woman with a parasol! Five stars.
Robyn Bachar’s Blood, Smoke and Mirrors was favorable reviewed on Smart Bitches, and that’s always a fine thing, so I took it upon myself to check this book out. It was my first from Samhain Press, who certainly did make an impression upon me with the gorgeous cover for this thing. Yeah, sure, it’s yet another Headless Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy heroine, but I will at least give this one points for not having a tramp stamp!
Points off, though, for how the girl on this cover is significantly thinner than I think the heroine’s actually supposed to be. That’s one of the things that stood out for me reading through this: i.e., that the heroine frequently describes herself as overweight if not outright fat. So I’m thinking that a bit more realism of cover portrayal might have been nice here, even as I acknowledge that yeah, that probably wouldn’t have sold as well. C’est la vie.
Anyway, the core concept of the book was the other thing that grabbed me: i.e., that our heroine is a witch who’s been banished by her brethren for violation of the Do No Harm rede–in self-defense against a would-be rapist. Naturally, Cat’s pretty bitter about this, and it doesn’t help much either that the one who turned her in was her own lover, Alexander Duquesne. But: Cat’s also in line to become the Titania, the mortal representative to Faerie in her neck of the woods. And cranky as she is at Lex, she’ll have to team up with him to find out who doesn’t want her anywhere near the Titania position.
All well and good. I waffled though about whether I liked the worldbuilding or not; it was certainly clearly laid out and pretty detailed. Some aspects of it were definitely unusual, such as “witches only do this kind of magic and necromancers only do this kind and guardians only do this kind”, not to mention an apparent progression of necromancers eventually becoming vampires. I’ll give due credit for that. I must note though that some of that also made me go “wait, what?”, a bit too much for my liking.
Same deal with Cat and Lex. What kicked this over into paranormal romance land for me, rather than urban fantasy, was three things: 1) their relationship was one of the biggest conflict drivers of the book, 2) there was quite a bit of emphasis about the sexual attraction between them, and 3) the Big Misunderstanding trope showed up. And while paranormal romance land is not a bad place to be in the slightest–witness the number of paranormal romances I’ve read and have on my to read queue–I found myself wishing there was a little less relationship angst and a little more plot.
Cat herself was another thing I waffled about. I liked that she came across a lot as a truly everyday woman, not only because of her weight, but because of her tastes in clothes and food. But at the same time, she was very much in the mold of Smartass Heroine, often to her own detriment, and that’s something I’d really like to see a bit less of in my heroines these days. (Less smartass, more smart.)
Last but not least, I found most of the antagonists a bit too much “evil because that’s their function in this plot” rather than “evil because they have actual motive”. Cat’s father didn’t work for me as a character, and neither did “Lovely Laura Barrenheart”, just because I had a very hard time imagining how any vampire who expected to be taken seriously would actually saddle herself with a name like that. But that said? Zachary Harrison did work, and was deliciously ambiguous.
All in all I liked it well enough, and can definitely see how the parts that didn’t necessarily work for me might work a lot better for others. I think for me this was just a question of taste and style preferences in my reading rather than any real fault of the book. Three stars.
You can’t pick up an urban fantasy these days without getting some variation on the “heroine in tough pose and generally without a head” cover. Nor are your chances good of finding an urban fantasy that does not involve vampires. Maria Lima’s Matters of the Blood has both of these things. But don’t let that stop you from picking this up, since it is in fact a fun read!
First up, this is actually less of an “urban” fantasy per se and more of a “rural” one. I’ve said in reviews of other things (c.f. Doranna Durgin’s A Feral Darkness) that I like seeing contemporary fantasy novels that aren’t set in major urban centers. Lima’s series is set out in a more rural stretch of Texas, and the setting alone adds a lot of color to the book.
Second, while Lima’s heroine Keira follows the standard mold of Heroine Who Has Great Magical Powers and Much Attitude But Who Really Just Wants to Be Left Alone, she’s nonetheless likable. Keira doesn’t go too overboard with the sass, and what attitude she’s got towards her family is justified! To balance that out, she’s got a lively friendship going on with her best friend Bea, and an intriguing almost-a-relationship with Adam Walker, the mysterious owner of a local dude ranch.
Which of course brings me around to the vampire part of the story. It’s not a spoiler to say that Keira discovers that OH HEY this guy’s a vampire; it’d almost be more surprising if she discovered he wasn’t, really. As a character Adam brings nothing new to the vampire milieu, but even given that, I liked him. He wasn’t overly angsty as a vampire love interest goes, which helped.
The mystery’s fun, too, as Keira, her brother Tucker, Bea, and Adam must investigate recent murders around their town–including that of Keira’s undertaker cousin Marty, the one member of their family who has no powers whatsoever. There are interesting power plays going on with Adam and his subordinates, and good backstory to bolster it all up. I’ll be coming back for more. Four stars.
Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies was one of those books I’d been hearing about for ages, and I’ll cheerily admit that glancing at the blurbs on it and the other books in the series in a bookstore did pique my interest. I did not, however, get a chance to read this one until it was handed out briefly for free in PDF form as part of a promotion for Westerfeld’s book Leviathan.
Survey says: less complex than I would have liked, which so far I find is the risk I run when I delve into YA. On the surface, there’s decent worldbuilding here in a sort of Logan’s Run-like, futuristic setting where every member of society is given an operation at age 16 to turn them into a “pretty”. Tally, about to turn 16, is ardently looking forward to her turn, since the transition means she’ll have no responsibilities for a while and will get to indulge in non-stop parties and fun.
This being a dystopian setting, though, she naturally finds out that not everybody is as enthused about becoming pretty as they should be. When her best friend escapes the city in search of a hidden enclave of people led by a couple of doctors who have discovered disturbing truths about the operation, Tally is forced to go after her and infiltrate the enclave as a spy.
All of which is a tasty little core of a story, to be sure. That said, I frequently found the worldbuilding thinner than I would have liked even as I appreciated the base concepts. Same deal with the characterizations of most of the cast. Tally read for me as too simplistic, and I couldn’t really nail down whether this was because it was a YA novel and therefore less complex than I prefer, or simply because Tally as a teenaged girl was being portrayed believably as a teenaged girl. Her primary motivation is at first of course to be a pretty–which seems reasonable for all the young people in her society, since that’s what they have drummed into their heads. But even afterward, as she starts cluing in to what’s going on, she is wishy-washy about committing to changing things, and half the time only seems interested in doing so because she’s attracted to the son of the doctors who run their little colony.
Overall though I did like the read, and I’ll probably be buying this sooner or later to get a proper copy, as well as continuing the series to see what happens next. There is a cliffhanger, and it got me well enough that yeah, I’m in for more. Three stars.
Nora Roberts really does love her some “girl who’s been away for ages goes back to family home in a small town, and OHNOEZ THERE’S A MURDER” plots, and Carnal Innocence is yet another one of those type of books. Fortunately, this is a plot formula that Ms. Roberts does well. So even though there’s nothing terribly out of the ordinary in this novel, it’s a fun read nonetheless.
This time around we’ve got a world-famous violinist, Caroline Waverly, returning to the small Southern town of Innocence to recuperate from a grueling performance schedule, romantic betrayal from her conductor and lover, and her domineering mother. But there are murders going on in Innocence; young women are being lured out at night. And one of the initial prime suspects is Tucker Longstreet, one of the sons of a local old and wealthy family, with a reputation for being quite the lady-killer. The question is, of course, does this mean literally?
This being a Nora Roberts novel, the answer to that question is a no-brainer. Roberts takes her usual circuitous (but not too circuitous) route towards identifying the real killer, and along the way sets up some quite nice chemistry between the prim Caroline and the lazily charming Tucker. I quite liked both characters, not only because of my partiality to lead characters who are musicians, but also because Tucker invariably reminded me of Sawyer from Lost. He has the same kind of rogueish Southern charm, and that’s a quality that Roberts writes with engaging skill.
Since the setting is Southern, there are racial tensions here as well as religious ones. Both of these are played a little heavy-handedly at times in the plot, but on the other hand, I still found them realistically done. The inevitable awful family secrets among the Longstreets, coming to light, set the book up for a resolution that did actually surprise me a bit, too. Three stars.
It gives me great, great glee to think of Jim Hines’ version of Little Red Riding Hood: a formidable assassin, “the Lady of the Red Hood”, whose magical cape grants her the ability to take on wolf form. She’s the central new character in Book 3 of his Princess series–and it just so happens that she’s coming back for a second round against Talia, “Sleeping Beauty”, one of the few warriors to ever successfully stand against her in battle.
Turns out that the Lady of the Red Hood has been unleashed on the kingdom of Beatrice and Theodore, and she’s aiming for a rematch with Talia.
That we get a whole lot more of the backstory for Talia in this installment of the series is my other favorite thing about it. Our three heroines are forced to venture into Talia’s homeland to track down who’s hired the Lady of the Red Hood to come after her, and in the process, we get an excellent portrait of a kingdom that’s been forced to reshape itself ever since Talia’s unhappy story began a century before. Tensions are high between the humans and the fairies, and equally delicious between our heroines and the the assassin who’s come after them.
If I had any quibbles at all with this story, they lie in wishing that Talia’s homeland was a bit more distinct from Danielle’s; save for a few changes of style in naming of places and people, I had a hard time telling the kingdoms apart. It didn’t help either that the heaviest influence on types of fairies in this series is still European, which struck me as weird in Talia’s clearly Arabic-influenced kingdom (with the exception of the peris). But this was a pretty minor quibble overall and I quite enjoyed this latest book, including the advancement of the romantic subplot! Four stars.
