The Sparrow / Mary Doria Russell

4.25 stars out of 5

In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet that will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question what it means to be "human". 

I enjoy First Contact stories and this was a particularly good one. I think my enjoyment of it was increased by reading it soon after Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, about a man who worked (sometimes with, sometimes against) the Jesuits in 17th century French Canada. Since a Jesuit priest, Emilio, is the main character in this novel, the historical context really helped me to appreciate him and his actions.

I found the switching between chapters set on Earth and those set on Rakhat to be very effective. Russell could reveal just enough in one setting to make the reader think they know something and then in the next section show how our assumptions can be dead wrong.

Although I thought that the humans’ easy ability to eat the flora and fauna of Rakhat to be a bit unlikely, I found their confusion and incorrect assumptions about the beings that they encountered to be wholly believable. Despite Emilio’s extreme talent as a linguist and language learner, it is difficult enough for us to understand the cultures of other Earthlings, let alone that of beings on another planet.

It wasn’t until the very last pages of the book that the title became clear to me, but once it came into focus, I appreciated it’s subtlety. A very interesting book and one which I will continue to think about for days to come.

Book number 355 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy reading project.

Callahan's Legacy / Spider Robinson

2.5 stars out of 5 

For years, Callahan's was the place where friends met to have a few drinks, tell a few jokes, and occasionally save the world. Until that unfortunate incident with the nuke a few years ago....

But Jake Stonebender and his wife have opened a new Callahan's, Mary's Place, and all the regulars are there: Doc Webster, Fast Eddie the piano player, Long Drink McGonnigle, and of course the usual talking dogs, alcoholic vampires, aliens, and time travelers. Songs will be sung, drinks will be drunk (and drunks will have drinks), puns will be swapped...and as a three-eyed, three-legged, three-armed, three-everythinged alien flashes through space toward the bar, it just might be time to save the world again....

Suffice it to say that if you like Robinson’s Callahan novels, you will like this one. This offering was perhaps a bit better than the previous volumes or perhaps the series is growing on me (like a fungus). Something about Robinson’s voice in these books irritates the shit out of me--to me he sounds rather smugly self-satisfied. I hope that I’m wrong on that, but that’s my experience.

This story hasn’t aged well, being specific about certain computer and internet details as it is. It is definitely a creature of 1996. Also, be prepared for a LOT of pun-ishment. The puns are a characteristic of this series, but if you are allergic to this form of humour you may wish to pop an antihistamine before wading in.

Book number 354 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy reading project.

Timeless / Gail Carrige

4 out of 5 stars

Alexia Tarabotti, Lady Maccon, has settled into domestic bliss. Of course, being Alexia, such bliss involves integrating werewolves into London High society, living in a vampire's second best closet, and coping with a precocious toddler who is prone to turning supernatural willy-nilly. Even Ivy Tunstell's acting troupe's latest play, disastrous to say the least, can not put a dampener on Alexia's enjoyment of her new London lifestyle.

Until, that is, she receives a summons from Alexandria that cannot be ignored. With husband, child, and Tunstells in tow, Alexia boards a steamer to cross the Mediterranean. But Egypt may hold more mysteries than even the indomitable Lady Maccon can handle. What does the vampire Queen of the Alexandria Hive really want from her? Why is the God-Breaker Plague suddenly expanding? And how has Ivy Tunstell suddenly become the most popular actress in all the British Empire?

I’ve really enjoyed this series, though I think that the first book was probably my favourite of the five. I’m looking forward to reading both Carriger’s Finishing School and The Custard Protocol series. I’m glad there are more books in this alternate history to look forward to!

With this book, the Alexia/Conall storyline may have reached the end of its natural life span. Not every thread is wrapped up, but that’s not always necessary or even desirable. Things that were amusing in previous books (Lord & Lady Maccon living in Lord Akeldama’s third best closet, for instance) are becoming less entertaining. Prudence makes up for that as she becomes a character in her own right (and that will make The Custard Protocol interesting).

I must say that I was glad to see Biffy settled into his new role(s). He’s made the shift from vampire drone to young werewolf-about-town quite successfully, found a new squeeze, and shown some career potential. I’ll miss him more than Alexia and Conall, I think.

Such a fun world and I look forward to future expeditions into it!

A Kestrel for a Knave / Barry Hines

3.5 stars out of 5

Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life. 

I must confess that this was a somewhat depressing book to read. It’s the December selection for my real-life book club and it reminded me of an earlier selection we read this year, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. At first glance, the circumstances of a poor Puerto Rican family in an American ghetto (RF) and a poor family in the North of England (KfaK) might seem to be entirely different. But many of their problems overlap.

Lack of opportunities, poor education, inadequate nutrition, and no role models of successful people for the younger people to emulate. Billy, in Kestrel, has a neglectful mother, an abusive brother, a job before school that is precarious, plus teachers that don’t care about their students, not to mention abusive teachers. He has to share not only a bedroom, but a bed with his drunken, irritable older brother Jud, then get up super early to deliver papers. There’s no money for extras like gym clothes and no energy for non-necessities. Billy doesn’t want to end up working in the mines, but he doesn’t have either the energy or a plan to change his destiny.

But our true interests will shine through--Billy claims a young kestrel from a nest, steals a book on falconry, and proceeds to train himself and the bird. Obviously, in multiple intelligence theory, Billy would have a Naturalistic intelligence. Being stuck in a classroom or forced to participate in sport is never going to be right for him. He had all of my sympathy, as I share his love of nature and particularly birds.

Dark Road to Darjeeling / Deanna Raybourn

3.7 stars out of 5

After eight idyllic months in the Mediterranean, Lady Julia Grey and her detective husband are ready to put their investigative talents to work once more. At the urging of Julia's eccentric family, they hurry to India to aid an old friend, the newly widowed Jane Cavendish. Living on the Cavendish tea plantation with the remnants of her husband's family, Jane is consumed with the impending birth of her child—and with discovering the truth about her husband's death. Was he murdered for his estate? And if he was, could Jane and her unborn child be next?

Amid the lush foothills of the Himalayas, dark deeds are buried and malicious thoughts flourish. The Brisbanes uncover secrets and scandal, illicit affairs and twisted legacies. In this remote and exotic place, exploration is perilous and discovery, deadly. The danger is palpable and, if they are not careful, Julia and Nicholas will not live to celebrate their first anniversary.

Maybe 3.7 stars? I didn’t like this book quite as much as the first 3 volumes. Part of this, I’m sure is because Julia and Nicholas are a married couple now, so the romantic suspense dimension of the narrative is much more limited. We know that they are unlikely to part, that they care about each other a great deal, so the author must re-create that tension with differences of opinion regarding their matrimonial roles. Slightly less effective for me than the courtship question.

The mystery plot reminded me rather of M.M. Kaye’s mysteries, like Death in Kashmir. I can see why the author chose the place--it’s exotic to those of us in North America and Europe, plus it was part of the British Empire during the time period. She had sent Jane there in the previous book, so it made sense to have Portia and Julia follow her in this volume. However, I find I prefer Victorian plots set in England, so this may be another reason that I prefer the previous books.

However, the setting stirred up memories of the days I spent in Assam and Bhutan in 2010, seeing the dark green tea plantations, laden elephants on the edges of the roads, and the many prayer flags and prayer wheels along our route. Good memories of a beautiful place and encounters with many friendly people.

Elephants come to drink at a river in Assam

Prayer flags across a Bhutanese river

Many prayer flags at the Chele La Pass, Bhutan

To Darkness and to Death / Julia Spencer-Fleming

4 out of 5 stars

Millicent van der Hoeven has decided to sell her family's Adirondack estate to a nature conservancy. But on the day of the land transfer, her brother frantically calls the police. Millie has disappeared in the cold November forest…
 
Reverend Clare Fergusson gets an early morning phone call to join the Millers Kill search and rescue operation. As a former Army helicopter pilot trained in survival skills, she can't refuse the request—even though it's the day of the bishop's annual visit. Worse for Clare, the search operation will link her up with Russ Van Alstyne, the very married local police chief who is her greatest temptation. Now, as Clare and Russ race time to find Millie van der Hoeven, they soon discover the secrets of someone who is desperate to stop the sale...and a deadly madness waiting to destroy them all.

Let’s face it, those of us who are still reading this series at volume four are probably reading it more for the Claire/Russ relationship dynamics than for the mysteries. Not that the mysteries are bad, they just aren’t really the main point of this series to my way of thinking.

In fact, there are a couple of turns in this particular book that I didn’t find realistic. The villains are just too impulsive, one beating a young woman almost to death, then running in a panic and the other accidentally killing a man, then trying to bend events to benefit himself. The first situation is the most believable of the two--I can see that happening to someone with poor impulse control, which fits the author’s characterisation of him. I’d like to think that people are less cold blooded than the accidental killer, but perhaps I’m a hopeless optimist. However, if one is going to accept those actions as possible, the way the author linked them together was well done.

I’m definitely going to be reading the next book, because Claire and Russ either have to do something about their attraction or quit tormenting each other. Russ seems to have some idea of what he’s going to do by this book’s end, and Claire has found someone to talk to about the situation, so I’m sure that things are going to shift in the next volume. However, I have reading goals to meet before the end of 2019, so I’m not sure when I will get back to this series. Rest assured that I’ll be back to check on the situation in Miller’s Kill as soon as I can.

Out of the Deep I Cry / Julia Spencer-Fleming

4 out of 5 stars

On April 1, 1930, Jonathan Ketchem's wife Jane walked from her house to the police department to ask for help in finding her husband. The men, worn out from a night of chasing bootleggers, did what they could. But no one ever saw Jonathan Ketchem again...

Now decades later, someone else is missing in Miller's Kill, NY. This time it's the physician of the clinic that bears the Ketchem name. Suspicion falls on a volatile single mother with a grudge against the doctor, but Reverend Clare Fergusson isn't convinced. As Clare and Russ investigate, they discover that the doctor's disappearance is linked to a bloody trail going all the way back to the hardscrabble Prohibition era. As they draw ever closer to the truth, their attraction for each other grows increasingly more difficult to resist. And their search threatens to uncover secrets that snake from one generation to the next--and to someone who's ready to kill.

I am really enjoying this series despite the fact that I’m having to use interlibrary loan to get a hold of this one and the next volume. Once I’ve read that one, they’re all available here locally and I can binge read them if I decide to.

I love the use of history here--linking the present to the past in meaningful ways. As a genealogist, I’ve found that a family’s past can sometimes explain current problems. At least in my own family, it has. We can’t easily escape the ties of past events unless we understand what’s going on and make a conscious decision to change things.

The other aspect that really appeals to me is the relationship between Claire and Russ. They are trying so hard to keep it at friendship. Both are honourable people and their reputations are important to them, but it’s becoming obvious in this volume that there is a certain amount of gossip going on regarding the exact nature of their bond. It doesn’t help that fate keeps putting them in positions where they are bound to be tempted. It’s agonizing slow-motion, keeping the tension tight and I’m finding that irresistible!

Silent on the Moor / Deanna Raybourn

4 out of 5 stars 

In Grimsgrave Hall, enigmatic Nicholas Brisbane has inherited a ruined estate, replete with uncanny tenants and one unwanted houseguest: Lady Julia Grey. Despite his admonitions to stay away, Lady Julia arrives in Yorkshire to find Brisbane as remote and maddeningly attractive as ever. Cloistered together, they share the moldering house with the proud but impoverished remnants of an ancient family: the sort that keeps their bloodline pure and their secrets close. Lady Allenby and her daughters, dependent upon Brisbane and devastated by their fall in society, seem adrift on the moor winds, powerless to change their fortunes. But poison does not discriminate between classes.... A mystery unfolds from the rotten heart of Grimsgrave, one Lady Julia may have to solve alone, as Brisbane appears inextricably tangled in its heinous twists and turns. But blood will out, and before spring touches the craggy northern landscape, Lady Julia will have uncovered a Gypsy witch, a dark rider, and a long-buried legacy of malevolence and evil. Deanna Raybourn spins a gripping tale of loyalty and lust, set against the wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors.

I had to order this book through interlibrary loan, but I am glad that I did. I read all 465 pages in one day--I really didn’t want to set the book down. Raybourn writes a really good Gothic murder mystery/romance. 

Lady Julia Grey is part of that movement that I sense in fiction right now to feminize the story of Victorian times. The role of women was definitely undergoing change during this time period, what with Margaret Sanger’s championing of women’s rights and birth control, plus the Rational Dress and the women’s suffrage movements. Upper class women’s desires to be able to move, to not be subject to restrictive social mores, and to control their own bodies. What must it have been like to have all your choices subject to parents or brothers? 

Julia is a very sympathetic character to the modern female reader. We identify with her desire to pursue what she wants (Brisbane) without having to answer to her stuffy eldest brother. She is fortunate to have a father who is willing to aid and abet. I was also glad to see that Raybourn spreads the restrictions around, writing Julia’s brother Valerius as a frustrated medical doctor. Gentlemen aren’t allowed to “practice trade,” preventing Valerius from becoming what he is meant to be and showing that even men were hemmed in by the social contract of the time.

I’m disappointed that I will once again have to specially request the next volume of this series through interlibrary loan. Plus, I am unsure where Raybourn will be able to take it after the conclusion of this installment, but I am willing to give it a try.

Gap Into Power / Stephen R. Donaldson

3.5 out of 5 stars

The stage is set of confrontation at Billingate--illegal shipyard, haven for pirates and brigands, where every vice flourishes and every appetite can be sated.  Gateway to the alien realm of the Amnion, the shipyard is a clearinghouse for all they require to fulfill their mutagenic plans against humanity.

It is here that the fate of Morn Hyland is to be decided amid a kaleidoscopic whirl of plot and counterplot, treachery and betrayal.

As schemes unravel to reveal yet deeper designs, Morn, Nick, Angus' lives may all be forfeit as pawns in the titanic game played our between Warden Dios, dedicated director of the UMC Police, and the Dragon, greed-driven ruler of the UMC.  Here, the future of humankind hangs on the uncertain fortune of Morn Hyland in a daring novel of epic power and suspense, relentlessly gripping from first page to last.

I have made no secret of the fact that I struggle with Stephen Donaldson’s writing. This is the only series of his that I have made any connection with, and my relationship to it is turbulent. I’m not one of those people who needs to like the characters in order to like the book, but it helps if I care what happens to them. I reluctantly care about what happens to the main characters in the Gap series.

Its like Donaldson took the Star Trek universe and turned it inside out. There is no Prime Directive, no Starfleet, no honourable oversight by basically good-intentioned people. Like in C.J. Cherryh’s Company Wars series, it is the giant corporation that controls space and with the United Mining Companies comes the shadowy director, also known as the Dragon, who seeks to control everything.

In many ways, this is a bleaker, darker version of Cherryh’s idea of the megacorporation running outer space, like Glen Cook’s The Black Company running the universe. I had to order this volume through interlibrary loan, but I’ve got the remaining books from the local used book store, so finishing the series is a very likely proposition.

Book number 316 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project.

Vurt / Jeff Noon

3.5 stars out of 5

Vurt is a feather--a drug, a dimension, a dream state, a virtual reality. It comes in many colors: legal Blues for lullaby dreams. Blacks, filled with tenderness and pain, just beyond the law. Pink Pornovurts, doorways to bliss. Silver feathers for techies who know how to remix colors and open new dimensions. And Yellows--the feathers from which there is no escape.

The beautiful young Desdemona is trapped in Curious Yellow, the ultimate Metavurt, a feather few have ever seen and fewer still have dared ingest. Her brother Scribble will risk everything to rescue his beloved sister. Helped by his gang, the Stash Riders, hindered by shadowcops, robos, rock and roll dogmen, and his own dread, Scribble searches along the edges of civilization for a feather that, if it exists at all, must be bought with the one thing no sane person would willingly give.

Well, if most cyberpunk were more like this, I would be more enthusiastic about it. This was fun. And it reminded me of so many other books that I have read during my Science Fiction & Fantasy project. Like A Clockwork Orange, oh my brothers! I also kept thinking about Gravity's Rainbow, just because of the way things flowed and characters entered and exited, only to return at odd moments. But mostly, it was like going Through the Looking Glass with Alice, where Alice is actually Philip K. Dick. I absolutely loved it when Scribb showed up at a club called the Slivey Tove and there was a White Rabbit doorman. That was when my Lewis Carroll suspicions were confirmed. And the dogmen made me think of The Island of Doctor Moreau (and in Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series, what they called the Stripclub of Dr Moreau).

The layers of reality were both confusing and intriguing--just trying to keep track of where Scribb was could be challenging. (Just like the Queen of Hearts said, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in one place).

I haven’t had much luck locating the other two volumes (Pollen andAutomated Alice), but I intend to keep searching for them.

Book 315 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.

Blood Curse / Kat Flannery

2.5 stars out of 5

Four years after the Blood Curse, Pril of the Peddlers vows to protect her child against the evil men who hunt her. With her clan unaware of the branded girl among them, Pril has to keep the identity of her daughter a secret. When her child is kidnapped, she is forced to ask Merchant runner, Kade Walker, for his help. 
Kade Walker needs to find the gypsy child. Blackmailed and pushed beyond his own moral code, he is determined to do whatever it takes. When he comes across the Peddler clan, he is sure the girl is there, however all hope is lost when the gypsies capture him. Time is running out-until Pril makes him an offer he cannot refuse. 
Amidst greed, lust, revenge and love, Pril will need to trust Kade. But as the evil nears and doubt creeps in, will she discover that the enemy has been standing next to her all along?

I chose this book because the author is coming to a conference that I’m attending in August. I like to have some idea what the keynote authors have to offer, so that I know which panels and discussions that I want to attend.

I had to order this book on interlibrary loan--my public library doesn’t have anything by this author. On the basis of this book, I’d have to say that they’ve made the right decision. Not that the ideas were bad, they weren’t. But the expression of them wasn’t what I would expect. In fact, I was disappointed.

The first pages were confusing, as the action went too fast for the exposition. It all figured itself out in subsequent pages, but it was an inauspicious beginning. Add to that some clumsy sentence structures, where I wasn't sure which pronoun referred to which person, and some questionable word choices--I’m sure in one sentence the author meant “condescension” but instead “condensation” was printed. Also, on several occasions, the men are described as having “meaty fists.” Now, I know what that means, but I think there are many words that would describe large, powerful hands better than that. It was (thankfully) not a long book, but it made the entire story feel rushed, which may be why so many plot points were telegraphed very early in the narrative, leaving little for the reader to discover or be surprised by.

All in all, I’m glad that I read the book--I now know the author’s level of skill and it took me only a partial evening to finish the volume. I’m truly sorry that I didn’t enjoy the novel more, but I will see what the author has to say in her keynote address, but I imagine that I’ll be spending my conference time listening to others.

The Future is Written / Jonas Saul

2 out of 5 stars

When Sarah Roberts blacks out, she wakes to find prophetic notes mysteriously
written by her own hand. After receiving a message that someone is about to
be kidnapped with instructions on how to stop it, Sarah’s convinced it won’t be hard
to do. She is wrong.

The kidnappers take Sarah instead. She’s thwarted them in the past, and they
want to know how she keeps showing up where she has no business being.

Sarah needs help from the police, but they’re hunting her for a different reason.
They found her notebook riddled with prophetic messages, linking her to crimes and
unsolved cases. Is she a vigilante keeping score? Or on a citywide crime spree?

Armed with a note that simply states, save yourself, Sarah struggles to stay alive
using her wit and street smarts.

First things first: this was really outside my wheelhouse. Not my thing at all. However, the premise was an interesting one, something with potential. This author will be coming to a conference that I’m attending in August and I try to read something by each key note speaker before the conference so I will know who I want to hear more from. I had to order this book by interlibrary loan—my local library had nothing by this author. It turns out that this book was actually a collection of three (as I discovered at the end) though I had guessed that as I was reading.

Thrillers are really not my cuppa tea. I had a similar experience with another author at the conference last year—he was a lovely man, I just couldn’t enjoy his books. Which is fine. There’s a lid for every pot, and these type of books just aren’t my “lid.” I had to laugh, though, when I realized that the bad guys in both this and one of the books I read last year threatened their male associates with castration if they failed. Seriously, is this a thing?

I have come to the conclusion that thriller readers are in it for the plot and only the plot. The characters tend to be cardboard stereotypes and the action is non-stop, with no chances to slow down and consider implications or underlying themes. The paranormal aspects of this book were what made it tolerable for me—Sarah (the main character) is an automatic writer who receives messages from the “Other Side.” Sometimes oddly specific—be under this bridge at this time on this day. Bring a hammer. There’s enough ambiguity to make it challenging.

I realized as I read the afterword that I’ll be interested to hear this author speak at least once at the conference. He described the vivid dreams that he had of his deceased brother that inspired the novel. I’ve experienced similar things and could appreciate what he has done with his ideas.

Random Family / Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

2.5 stars out of 5

In her extraordinary bestseller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances - Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar - Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between survival and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and, throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty.

Charting the tumultuous cycle of the generations - as girls become mothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation - LeBlanc slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and true story.

I guess that I’m not entirely sure what the author was trying to achieve with this book. There’s no introduction, there’s no conclusion--I don’t enough about her to know her motivations. To be charitable, it would seem that she is trying to show, through the lives of three main people, the ties that bind people into poverty, drugs, and crime.

I have no doubts about how difficult it is to escape poverty. When your parents are uneducated, violent, and poor, who can you look to for an example of how to get out of that situation? During this time, in this place, boys were fathers in their teens, dropped out of school, and could only earn money through drugs and other criminality. Girls are pregnant in their teens, dropped out of school, and can’t provide for themselves and their children on minimum wage jobs. Sexual abuse is common because children get left with people that can’t be trusted. Girls skip from one man to the next because they’ve watched their mothers do the same thing. No one has enough education to properly fill out government forms to obtain benefits or to budget what little money they have. Boys take advantage of their male status to have sex with as many girls as they can talk into it. Girls can’t afford birth control and view having children as a way to bind boys to them.

Add to these problems that being a generous, good person can work against you. How many times did these women feed people who were only “random family”? Someone connected to someone who was part of the family? When girls have children by 2 or 3 different men, all of their relatives somehow become part of the web of family and women like Coco feel badly about denying them food and/or housing. Yet she knows that it’s bad for her own children in the long run.

These people are in a virtually inescapable situation. Their only pleasures are food and sex and they indulge when they get a chance--who wouldn’t? But when all the food is gone and there are more babies on the way, once again their lives worsen.

It was depressing reading because I know that the same things are probably happening to the children and grandchildren of Jessica, George, and Coco. Reading this made me realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have been born into the family that I’m part of, into the communities that I’m part of, and to be a citizen of my country. The fact that the adults around me didn’t lecture me about how to live, they just lived it and let me watch & learn. I learned to work, to live within my means, to value education, to regulate my emotions, all those skills that are necessary to living well.

I’d like to think the author meant this book as more than just downward social comparison, but I wish that she had addressed her purpose directly. What would have made things better? Are there programs that could actually assist people in these life circumstances? Ultimately, without this kind of analysis, I wonder why she wrote it?

Silent in the Sanctuary / Deanna Raybourn

4 out of 5 stars

Fresh from a six-month sojourn in Italy, Lady Julia returns home to Sussex to find her father's estate crowded with family and friends— but dark deeds are afoot at the deconsecrated abbey, and a murderer roams the ancient cloisters.

Much to her surprise, the one man she had hoped to forget—the enigmatic and compelling Nicholas Brisbane—is among her father's houseguests… and he is not alone. Not to be outdone, Julia shows him that two can play at flirtation and promptly introduces him to her devoted, younger, titled Italian count.

But the homecoming celebrations quickly take a ghastly turn when one of the guests is found brutally murdered in the chapel, and a member of Lady Julia's own family confesses to the crime. Certain of her cousin's innocence, Lady Julia resumes her unlikely and deliciously intriguing partnership with Nicholas Brisbane, setting out to unravel a tangle of deceit before the killer can strike again. When a sudden snowstorm blankets the abbey like a shroud, it falls to Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane to answer the shriek of murder most foul.

I know that this series is generally considered a mystery series, but to me it is more of a romance series. The mystery portion of the plot merely provides the grit around which the pearl of the romance is gradually being formed. As per usual with Gothic romances, the mystery portion unfolds at an extremely leisurely pace and at least half of the fun of the reading experience is the amount of time the couple spends bickering rather than kissing—they seem to get 1-2 kisses per book.

There are the usual romance tropes—a strong willed heroine, a man who doesn’t feel like he quite fits into her world, annoyance gradually changing to passion.

Raybourn also gives me enough amusing dialog to keep me entertained:

”I suppose it is quite certain he is dead?” I asked faintly.
“There are bits of him stuck to your shoe,” he remarked, rather unhelpfully.

However, the ending of the book, with Julia’s final visit to the Roma camp, just didn’t ring true for me. In my humble opinion, she drastically overpaid for the information that she received. Nevertheless, I will be happy to proceed to the next novel.

I Still Miss My Man But My Aim is Getting Better / Sarah Shankman

4 out of 5 stars

Tuesday, eleven-thirty, a bright spring morning .... Just off the breakfast shift at Sweet Willie's meat-and-three, Shelby Kay Tate rushes down an old-fashioned Nashville sidewalk with Thursday night playing itself out in her mind. It's songwriters' night at the Sutler, a chance to serve up her big, bluesy voice to a crowd hungry for new country songs. Shelby's picturing herself onstage, a girl from Star, Mississippi, belting one clear against the back wall, when a familiar head of golden hair brings her out of her reverie. She'd know Leroy Mabry's puny frame from a mile away - and the last time she'd seen it was in divorce court. Though she wonders what the devil he's up to, she's got better things to think about.

An eclectic mix of jealous women, scouting agents, and a big-name star ready for a big-time comeback make their own plans!

With this title, how could I resist this book? And it is highly appropriate that it is also the title of the country song that the main character, Shelby Kay Tate, is working on. She has come to Nashville to follow her passion, singing & song writing, having finally divorced her dead-beat husband Leroy.

When I first was getting going, I must confess that I was a bit worried that it was all going to be too cutesy. But once I gained some momentum, I got into the spirit of the book and was willing to go with the author’s plan. She is playing with stereotypes, both of the Nashville scene and those of what life in the Southern U.S. is like. As a Southerner herself, Shankman is obviously fondly making fun of her home and that affection shines throughout.

I loved how she kept introducing characters who all improbably are connected, creating a real tangle of yarn as all their threads cross during the course of the story. There is also a strong feminist vibe through the whole book, as both Shelby and several other women break free of bad or abusive relationships and are able to sing along, “I still miss my man, but my aim is getting better.”

The Legacy / R.A. Salvatore

2.5 stars out of 5

Having found a measure of peace among the dwarves in the reclaimed Mithral Hall, Drizzt begins to know contentment for perhaps the first time in his tumultuous life. But for a dark elf renegade from a city ruled by priestesses of a demon goddess, no peace can long last. It is Lolth herself, the dreaded Queen of the Demonweb Pits, who musters her followers to pour up from the black depths of the Underdark to reclaim for their goddess the one soul that had managed to elude her. The soul of Drizzt Do’Urden. 

In which Drizzt learns that family is forever. They may be evil psychotic bitches, but you’re still tethered to them unless you’re willing to do something drastic about it. Readers who have had a change in religion from their families and find it coming back to bite them will also feel right at home in this adventure!

The Spider goddess, Lloth, does her best to re-capture Drizzt and get what she considers her due. Possibly because friendship is an unknown quality in Drow Elf society, she under-estimates the number and quality of Drizzt’s friends and allies.

Obviously, the author is setting the stage for Drizzt to return to his society of origin and settle everyone’s hash with his amazing blade work. The biggest question for the next book is who will be accompanying him, especially after the losses in this book. I guess it says something about character development when one of the major characters can be wiped out completely and everyone else just keeps on keeping on.

Book Number 307 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

The Xibalba Murders / Lyn Hamilton

3 out of 5 stars

Lara McClintoch, her marriage ended and her antiques business sold, eagerly embarks on a trip to Mexico to help an old friend solve a mystery. On arrival, her friend puts off their meeting and then disappears. After Lara witnesses a brazen robbery of a valuable statue of the ancient Mayan civilization and stumbles on a corpse in a museum of antiquities, she becomes a police suspect. Afraid of the police and unsure whom to trust, Lara follows clues pointing to black marketeers and zealous revolutionaries. This dangerous trail takes her to remote archaeological ruins, lush jungles, and bustling streets filled with revelers. Lara engages in a thrilling battle of wits and courage to unmask a killer and stop a tomb-robber in the shadowy world of Xibalba, the Lords of Death.
I guess that the purpose of various reading challenges is to get us to read outside our comfort zones. I chose this book to be my “title beginning with X” choice for this year. Although I am a sometimes mystery reader, I’m generally not a big fan of the cozy mysteries and that is how I would have to categorize this one.

What I did really like in this book was the emphasis on Mayan mythology and culture. I hope that the author did her research, as I’d like to believe that I learned a few things about both. However, this is very much a first book as well as the first book in a series. Not too bad for the first novel of a bureaucrat (Hamilton was director of the governmental branch responsible for licensing of archaeology in the province of Ontario) and it did get nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel in 1998. Apparently Ms. Hamilton visited the sites where she set her books—what a wonderful way to choose your travel destinations!

I can’t say that I feel impelled to read the further adventures of Lara McClintoch, despite the fact that there are ten more books in the series. I suppose that if one of them fit into another reading challenge, that I could be convinced to pick it up.

Beggars in Spain / Nancy Kress

3.5 stars out of 5

In this future, some people need no sleep at all. Leisha Camden was genetically modified at birth to require no sleep, and her normal twin Alice is the control. Problems and envy between the sisters mirror those in the larger world, as society struggles to adjust to a growing pool of people who not only have 30 percent more time to work and study than normal humans, but are also highly intelligent and in perfect health.

The Sleepless gradually outgrow their welcome on Earth, and their children escape to an orbiting space station to set up their own society. But Leisha and a few others remain behind, preaching acceptance for all humans, Sleepless and Sleeper alike. With the conspiracy and revenge that unwinds, the world needs a little preaching on tolerance.

I read this original short story version of this title in July of this year. I was sufficiently impressed that I ordered the novelized version through interlibrary loan and I’m glad that I read both versions. Ms. Kress really managed to flesh out the ideas better when she had a bit more elbow room.

Now, I love to sleep. It is one of the basic human pleasures and when I have occasional bouts of wakefulness during the night I am pretty cranky the next day. I have never, ever wished to do without sleep (although sometimes, during particularly exciting periods of my life, I’ve declared that I’ll sleep when I’m dead). I once had a coworker who just hated the idea of sleep—like Roger Camden, father of our main character Leisha in this novel, she thought sleep was a complete waste of time. Each night, she would try to shave off minutes of sleep, working her way towards eliminating it. And she completely failed because sleep is really, really important to our health. (See Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams for an excellent discussion of these ideas). It really is the basis for avoiding illness and being able to reason and make sensible decisions.

The one thing that bothered me about the assumptions in this work was the conflation of not needing sleep with increased intelligence. It was my understanding that parents in the book could choose either/or for their genetically modified offspring. Just because a child was one of the Sleepless didn’t necessarily mean that they would be super smart or would have driving ambition. I guess those options were almost always chosen together? And much longer life was an accidental genetic change, much more likely to cause envy, in my opinion.

One other assumption annoyed me—why would being extremely smart curtail a person’s compassion? This whole idea that the rest of humanity consisted of beggars, not only not pulling their own weight, but relying on others for their support. Leisha, although she appears to be emotionally stunted, maintains that everyone has their place in the economic ecosystem, as people actually do in our world. I am left to suppose that the genes for sleep (or lack of the need for it) and/or intelligence would somehow also affect the genes for feeling emotion, not a proposition that I accept.

Despite these misgivings, I found the book to be an interesting exploration of intolerance, including taking it to the extremes to see what could happen. There is, of course, the old warning against messing around with genetics without fully realizing the consequences and then our new demographic group goes on to repeat the pattern. That particular ‘message’ is becoming a bit boring, honestly, but I still enjoy a book in which it is approached with a new twist, such as this one.

Book number 294 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

Last Call / Tim Powers

3 out of 5 stars

Set in Las Vegas, Last Call concerns the fate of Scott Crane, former professional gambler, recent widower, blind in one eye--and also the lost natural son of the man who is determined to kill him. In this novel, Crane is forced to resume the high-stakes game of a lifetime--and wager it all.

I wanted to like this book much more than I did—there was much in it that appealed to me, but as with Powers’ The Anubis Gates, I found myself somewhat underwhelmed. Much of this reaction will be due to my lack of familiarity with both tarot and (especially) poker. I fooled around with tarot cards in my late 20s, but never really committed myself to learning the art. And I think the kids at the back of the school bus tried to teach me poker during my high school years, but that was many decades ago and my memories are hazy at best.

There is a lot going on in this book and it speaks to Tim Powers’ skill as a writer that he managed to successfully weave it together into a cohesive story. Here are some of the elements he incorporates: archetypes & Jungian psychology, mythology of Egypt, Greece and Rome, the Arthur Legend and the Fisher King, T.S. Eliot, Bugsy Siegel, Las Vegas and Lake Mead.

As in The Anubis Gates, there is a body-snatching element to deal with as well. These are the only two books of Powers’ repertoire that I’ve read, so I found it interesting that they both had this esoteric characteristic in common. Come to think of it, poetry featured prominently in TAG as well, so it is obviously a great interest to this author.

Book number 292 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

Dora Doralina / Rachel de Queiroz

3 out of 5 stars

"What kills you today is forgotten tomorrow. I don't know if this is true or false because all that's real for me is remembrance." In her old age, Dora reflects on the major influences in her life: her mother, her career in the theater, and her one true love. Set in Brazil in the early part of the century, Dora, Doralina is a story about power. Through her fierce resistance to her mother and her later life as a working woman and widow, Doralina attempts to define herself in a time and culture which places formidable obstacles before women. Married off by her mother to a man she does not love, told what to wear and eat, Dora's reclaiming of herself is full of both discovery and rage. For her, independence is the right to protect herself and make her own choices. From a life confined by religion and "respectability," even her passionate attachment to a hard-drinking smuggler contains an act of free will previously unavailable to her. Dora, Doralina is an intimate, realistic, and vivid glimpse of one woman's struggle for independence, for a life in which she owns her actions, her pleasure, and her pain.

I read this book to fill the Q position in my quest to read women authors A-Z in 2018. I will honestly tell you that it is not a novel that I would naturally pick up so I probably didn’t appreciate it as much as someone who regularly reads literary fiction.

This is a character driven story which reads very much like an autobiography. It is basically a window into the world of women in Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century. Brazilian society, as in many societies at the time, is extremely macho and women don’t have all that much latitude.

The book is divided into three sections, representing three stages in the life of our narrator, Dora. The first section is Dora growing up and struggling with the control of her domineering mother. Dora refers to her as Senhora, not mother, and seems to be one of the only people in the household who longs for freedom. Dora ends up in a marriage which was more-or-less engineered by Senhora, and while she doesn’t mind her husband, she’s not desperately fond of him either. When he is killed, Dora takes a page from her mother’s playbook and uses her widowhood to give herself more freedom in the world.

The second section is Dora’s adventures in the world outside her mother’s farm. She finds employment and eventually ends up on stage, despite her shyness. She is both fiercely independent and highly reliant on her friends in the acting company, a duality that she freely acknowledges. And it is during her travels with the company that she meets the love of her life.

Part three is her life with The Captain. He reminded me of her first husband in several ways (his drinking, his macho possessiveness) but Dora’s feelings for him make the marriage an altogether different experience from the first.

Documenting women’s lives is an important pursuit, filling in the blanks of previously ignored reality. The novel also shows the particular barriers that many South American women are up against culturally.