Tag: 2011 book log

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are a few fundamental constants about my reading tastes. One of those is that any book with a decent treatment of the Sidhe is guaranteed to appeal to me. The other is that any book by C.E. Murphy is guaranteed to do the same. Combine these, and the result is a tasty little urban fantasy that pretty much has “read this, Anna” written all over it.

Lara Jansen has a strange gift: she can always, always tell when someone is lying. Compared to many high-powered, badassed urban fantasy heroines this days, this may not seem like much–and neither does Lara’s quiet profession of tailor, when you put her up against all the bounty hunters and detectives and assassins and whatnot that populate the genre. But her ability proves to be of critical importance when the Seelie prince Dafydd seeks her help in clearing him of a charge of murder.

And, unsurprisingly given that this is in fact a C.E. Murphy novel with the Sidhe in it, I enjoyed the hell out of this. It’s not a hundred percent perfect; the relationship between Lara and Dafydd started closing in on True Love a bit fast for my tastes, for example. That however is a fairly small quibble against all the things I liked about the story.

One, the heroine is indeed refreshingly not a high-powered badass at combat, either magical or physical. Her truthseeking gift has interesting character connotations for her; I liked that it made her shy away from reading fiction because it parses as “false” to her (even though, as a voracious reader, I have a hard time understanding people who don’t like to read for pleasure!), and I liked even more that it let her ramp up very quickly to accepting the truth of the existence of the Sidhe, thereby neatly sidestepping the whole traditional OMG MAGIC IS REAL?! reaction that also inundates the genre.

Two, I also like Dafydd as a hero, and I find it fun that his cover identify in the human world when the story starts is that of a TV weatherman. His relationship with the brother he’s accused of murdering is well drawn, as are his reactions as the consequences of his enlisting Lara’s aid start mounting.

To wit, three, there are indeed good strong consequences to Lara’s discovering Faerie. I particularly liked that the old-school difference in flow of time between Faerie and the human realm is used here, to very good effect and with distinct consequences for the major characters.

Given that this is a duology, the story is not resolved as of the end of this book, so be prepared for that if you go in. But fortunately, Book 2 is out later this year! And I will, of course, be reading it. For this one, four stars.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Those of you who follow my book reviews know I’m a big fan of C.E. Murphy’s work, and you need look no further than Demon Hunts, Book Five of the Walker Papers series, for a fine example as to why. At this point we’re far enough in on the series that all of the major characters are pretty much established–and yet, this is still a reasonably self-contained story, one which may not confuse a casual reader who happens to start with this one as an introduction to the series. (I wouldn’t recommend this necessarily as a starting point, just because there are references to earlier books and those will mean more if you’ve read them, yet they’re light-handed enough to not leave one totally lost.)

As of this book, Joanne Walker is a firmly established detective of the Seattle PD, with Billie Holiday as her partner. She’s gotten a lot more comfortable with her powers and her general place in the world, and as a result, is a much more likeable character than the Joanne of the first couple of books. A significant character from the earlier books makes a satisfying comeback here, and his return is important not only to Joanne’s own character development, but to the progression of things between herself and her boss Michael Morrison as well (to which this loyal fan says YAY!).

The biggest thing I liked about this installment, though, was the main plot. A wendigo is on the loose in Seattle, tearing victims apart so thoroughly that not even their souls are left behind for Billie to trace with his own gifts. Joanne’s hunt for this creature has a lot more focus to it than her previous supernatural outings have done, with even a bit of a revelation at a critical juncture about the creature–a very simple, basic revelation that took me pleasantly by surprise. Props as well for an FBI agent showing up to provide interesting connections to Jo’s backstory as well as a hint of how other law enforcement agencies deal with the supernatural.

Overall, this book rocked, and all the more so for providing an excellent leadin for Book 6. Five stars.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had a bit of a time getting into Sea of Suspicion, one of Carina Press’ romantic suspense titles. Toni Anderson did draw me in nicely with the setup: rugged coast of Scotland, marine biologist stumbling across a murder, investigating detective on a quest for vengeance and locked squarely on the biologist heroine’s boss as his primary suspect. By and large, it is a decent story. It’s just that various aspects of characterization never quite clicked in for me.

Part of this had to do with the obligatory Troubled Pasts for both the heroine and the hero. While I acknowledge that it’s a bit of a nice change of pace to see the hero as well as the heroine having to deal with sexual abuse in the past, that’s a particular plot point I’ve seen too much of, both in fiction and among people I know in real life. Which is about all I can say about that, really, and it has less to do with this particular book and way more with just my personal tastes as a reader.

More pertinent to the book was that at least for a good stretch in the beginning, I was actively disliking the hero. He pulls one stunt in particular at the heroine’s expense that made me cranky at him, and which was not entirely ameliorated by his owning up to it later.

I had better luck with liking the heroine as a character, even given my aforementioned weariness with sexual abuse as backstory. Plot-wise, the story’s decent, and to its credit, it did come together more strongly for me towards the end. Props too for Anderson doing a nice job keeping me from figuring out the actual killer until suitably close to the end. Three stars.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pop quiz! Which of these is a quote from Mojo Jojo of the Powerpuff Girls, and which is a quote from Justin Cronin’s The Passage?

“ONE EGG LEFT?! For a nutritious breakfast, TWO eggs is the minimum requirement! And I have but ONE, which is ONE shy of TWO! And it is TWO that I need! Curses! I must immediately purchase some eggs, for I need to have breakfast, and without the eggs I cannot have the breakfast that I so require!”

“She moved to where the bodies lay, the men and also their horses who were dead with no blood in them as was the case with all things that had died in this manner.”

Now, to be fair, it was only the one section of the book where Mr. Cronin was writing in this particularly long-winded style. And I’m pretty sure that he didn’t mean for that part of the book to be read in Mojo Jojo voice. That it did in fact pop right into my brain, though, made it significantly more difficult to take that bit seriously.

And really, that’s the first problem I have with this entire book: its length and verbosity. As someone who’s been working hard the last couple of years to learn how to write more concisely in an effort to sell my initial novels, I cannot help but react badly to an 800+ page doorstop of a novel. Especially when this leads into the second problem I have with the book: that so much has been made of how Amazing and Awesome Mr. Cronin’s effort to write a genre novel is, when he’s not doing a single thing in this story that I haven’t seen done just as well and more concisely by SF/F genre authors. Yet, since he’s the big-name literary author, he gets plaudits that the vast majority of SF/F authors will never be lucky enough to achieve.

Secret government experiment, prompted by Mysterious Investigations into the jungle? Check. The experiment going horribly, horribly wrong? Check. A rampaging virus that turns a lot of the population into vampire-like creatures? Check. Survivors that must eventually band together decades later to find the ultimate way to get rid of all the vampires? Check. Mysterious Young Girl who may be the KEY TO ALL SALVATION? Check, check, and check. Seen it, lots and lots and LOTS of times.

All that said? If you can slog through 800+ pages, and you can deal with the hard time jump between the first part of the story and the rest of it, the book’s actually not half bad. Mr. Cronin uses some tropes that did make me roll my eyes quite a few times (and which will doubtless do the same for anyone who’s read more than one SF/F or horror novel, or who’s seen more than one SF/F or horror movie), and the very end of the book in particular provoked an “oh for fuck’s sake” out of me. It did, however, keep me interested enough to make it all the way to the end, even though it was verbose and cliche-ridden.

And in the end, if a book does that and I’m even mildly entertained, I am willing to say that it did its job. I’m still trying to decide if I want to actually buy a copy to keep in my personal collection, but I was quite fine with checking this out from the library. I’d recommend the same for anyone who might be on the fence about whether to buy this one. Three stars.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s taken me a while to figure out exactly how to review this book. The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker has a lot in it I like quite a bit, but on the other hand, it’s also got some elements that drive me absolutely crazy. The core concept is certainly Relevant to My Interests: an urban fantasy scenario, only set in a period time frame, and written in a style heavily influenced by old-school Gothic romances. We’ve got a secret society of men and women whose function is to protect London from ghosts and other supernatural creatures, and who discover that the strange young albino woman who shows up at their academy may be their prophesied seventh member, vital to their defense against an ultimate forthcoming evil.

All well and good. And certainly I must say that Ms. Hieber at many points in this book turns a lovely phrase indeed, very nicely evoking the Gothic style.

The problem for me is, there are also many points where she goes a bit far for my tastes in evoking that style. Our young heroine, Miss Percy Parker, spends just about all of her on-camera time dewily mooning over her handsome professor, the leader of the aforementioned secret society, Alexi Rychman. This frustrates me for several reasons. One, Percy is apparently brilliant in all of her classes except his, yet we never see her actually being particularly brilliant. Two, despite the fact that she’s handed an opportunity to have private tutoring sessions with her professor, she spends way, WAY more time swooning over him than she does actually trying to apply herself to learning anything from him, which would have made me respect her as a character quite a bit more. And three, there was just way too much emphasis, seemingly every third or fourth paragraph in these scenes, about Alexi’s “rich voice” and “noble brow”. All of this is rather appropriate for a traditional Gothic heroine, don’t get me wrong–but in a modern work, I find myself hoping for more, a better balance between the Gothic story tropes and a modern reader’s sensibilities.

My other main point of frustration has to do with the big climax of the story, about which I can say little, since I don’t want to spoil it. I will however freely disclaim that this book ties into certain aspects of Greek mythology about which I have very, very strong opinions–and in fact about which I’ve written a story of my own, so I can’t really address the ending of the story and what’s revealed there in a suitably unbiased manner.

I will say though that if Gothic romance is your thing, you’ll probably eat this book right up. And again, Ms. Hieber’s command of her prose is often very lovely, if you don’t mind your prose in shades of purple. Three stars.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn’t get into Book 2 of the Samantha Jellicoe series as much as I did the first–but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. This book’s set three months after the first, and changes have come into our cat burglar heroine’s life; she’s not only got a real, blossoming relationship with billionaire Rick Addison now, she’s even trying to go straight. Instead of robbing people blind, she’s now trying to advise them on their security.

It’s a great plan on paper, but it just goes to figure that one of Sam’s very first clients is murdered shortly after hiring her. Nor does it help matters much that Rick’s ex-wife arrives on the scene, ostensibly to integrate herself into Florida society–but as far as Sam’s concerned, clearly trying to integrate herself right back into Rick’s life, and Sam just can’t have that, now can she? Toss in complications with Sam’s former fence being a suspect in the murder of her client, and all in all, it’s a tasty little mystery.

The main reason it didn’t work quite as well for me as the first one, I think, lies with how there’s a bit more emphasis on the whole OHNOEZ EX-WIFE plot than I would have liked, vs. the OHNOEZ Sam is Trying to Go Straight But Her Past is Complicating Things plot, which was quite a bit more interesting. However, I’ve got to give Enoch credit for avoiding getting too cliched with the ex-wife, and for keeping Sam and Rick’s developing relationship lively. I’ll be proceeding on to book 3! Three stars.