The Light and Shadow Trilogy- Moira Katson

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book review, fantasy, fiction, light and shadow trilogy, moira katson, self-published, series, shadowborn, shadowforged, shadows end

5 Stars

The pattern here seems to be: if I’m reviewing a whole series at once, I probably loved it. It’s pretty unusual for me to finish one book and immediately buy the rest of the series. I have to be really impressed.

I have to confess to being a bit reluctant to pick up Shadowborn. It was probably the fourth book I started after trying three others that looked similar, only to put them down after twenty pages or so. There are so many fantasies out there, and frankly, most I see are pretty mediocre.

So I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing from the first sentence, the fascinating world and characters, and a story that sucked me right in.

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Promises to Keep- Shayne Parkinson

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a second chance, book review, fiction, historical fiction, mud and gold, promises to keep, self-published, sentence of marriage, series, settling the account, shayne parkinson

5 Stars

This series comprises a trilogy and a sequel, all of which I practically devoured. “Sentence of Marriage” had been sitting on my Nook for well over a year, since I feared it would be romance novel-y. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The story of Amy, a girl living in New Zealand in the 1880’s is heartfelt without being sappy, and in spite of its grittiness, ultimately warm and uplifting.

Amy Leith is a 15-year-old living on a New Zealand farm with her father and two older brothers. Even though her mother died when she was small, and her beloved grandmother not long before the book begins, we get the sense that life, though hard, is happy, and she enjoys a close relationship with her family.

All of that changes when her father takes a business trip to Auckland (two days away via steamer!) and returns with a surprise bride. Susannah is an old maid from a wealthy family, and couldn’t be less suited to farm life. I really wanted to feel sorry for her, but she’s so whiny and so horrible to Amy, that my sympathy quickly dries up. She makes life difficult for her husband and stepsons, but they spend their days on the farm, so it’s Amy who bears the brunt of her unhappiness.

So Say the Waiters- Justin Sirois

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book review, fiction, justin sirois, so say the waiters

4 Stars

How’s this for an idea? There’s a new app making its way out of the hipster scene. Called KidnApp, it lets you arrange your own kidnapping. Just for fun, of course. You get to decide how long you’ll be gone and what – if anything- will be done to you.  Looks like there’s some potential for things to go wrong, eh? You’d be right about that!

So Say the Waiters is the first installment in a series focused on the people using and making the app. It’s weird, wonderful, and au courant, with a grimy window into the life of Baltimore hipsters.

Dani is a tattooed bartender who was one of the first users of the app. She’s still one of their best “customers.” In the “kidnapping” we get to experience with her, she has a guy play the viola for her for several hours, while she’s tied up and blind-folded. Hmph.  I have to confess I was relieved that while kinkier kidnappings were hinted at, they never materialized in any graphic way.

The Lies of Locke Lamora- Scott Lynch

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a game of thrones, a song of ice and fire, book review, fantasy, fiction, george rr martin, red seas under red skies, scott lynch, series, the gentleman bastards, the lies of locke lamora, the republic of thieves

OMG Fantastic!! Five BILLION Stars!!

How’s that for some enthusiasm? I haven’t been this excited about a series since George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones for you TV people). It hasn’t been since I first read A Game of Thrones that I had to buy the next book in the series immediately. And the next one, too. So really, I”ll be reviewing the whole Gentleman Bastards Sequence, so far.

I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamora because I’m getting ready to write my own fantasy series, and needed inspiration. And it was provided in spades. In fact, I feel that Lynch has set the bar rather high. He does everything right.  If I can emulate him to a tiny degree, I’ll be happy.

Locke Lamora is an orphan with an unknown past, picked up by a “thiefmaker” in a fantastical version of Renaissance Venice, known as Camorr. It soon becomes apparent that Locke at age six or seven is dangerously good at what he does. Mostly dangerous.. So, the thiefmaker sells him to a temple, where the resident priest is really a confidence trickster, grooming youngsters for the trade.

Locke joins the twins, Calo and Galdo Sanza, along with the mysterious Sabetha, who is away training. Eventually Jean Tannen, a burly nerdy sort, rounds out their little gang. The story quickly jumps ahead to Locke in his early twenties. The old priest is dead, Sabetha is gone (and no one is willing to talk about it), and a 12-year-old named Bug is now part of the group.

Never Buried- Edie Claire

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book review, edie claire, fiction, leigh koslow, mystery, never buried, series

Three Stars

Never Buried is the first in the Leigh Koslow Mysteries series. Leigh is a sporadically employed advertising writer and amateur sleuth. At the start of the book, she is staying with her pregnant sister Cara, in Cara’s fancy historic house in Pittsburgh while Cara’s husband is out of the country on business. The husband is also Leigh’s ex.

The fun begins when a dead body is found in a hammock outside the house. Strangely, it’s not a fresh corpse; it’s been dead for years, and belonged to a past resident of the house. Of course, Leigh is intrigued and nosy. She also has a best friend on the police force, who of course tells her to keep her amateur nose out of it. And as we know, telling an amateur sleuth to “let the pros handle it” is like waving a red flag in front of . . . well, you know.

A Way of Life, Like Any Other- Darcy O’Brien

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a way of life like any other, book review, darcy obrien, fiction, memoir

Five Stars

A Way of Life, Like Any Other was first published in 1977, won a slew of awards, then at some point, went out of print. Republished this year in paperback and e-book, a whole new generation is sure to be delighted by this wonderful book.

O’Brien was the only child of 1940’s movie stars George O’Brien and Marguerite Churchill, went to Princeton and spent most of his life as a college professor. This book is really a fictionalized memoir of O’Brien’s peculiar childhood in the Hollywood of the Golden Age.

The nameless narrator is born into a sumptuous life, while his parents are at the height of their careers. They live on a luxurious California ranch, attended by numerous staff doting on the little fellow. “Was there ever so pampered an ass as mine?” That line alone establishes the tone of the book: wry, humorous, a bit snarky. As a result, I chuckled through some what would have otherwise been pretty dark passages.

I’d Tell You I l Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You- Ally Carter

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ally carter, book review, fiction, id tell you i love you, series, young adult

Four Stars

I really enjoyed I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You, partly because it was really well-done, but also because I would have loved to read this when I was a teenager. I really wanted to be a spy (and an opera singer and an astronaut), and even went so far as to “practice” whenever I got the chance. So, if you thought you were being followed by an awkward-looking teenage girl many, many years, congratulations- you blew my cover!

This book is first in the Gallagher Girls series, and follows the adventures of Cammie Morgan, just your average teenage girls at boarding school. A boarding school which turns promising teenage girls into spies. The whole thing is of course, top-secret. Which makes any kind of love life really awkward, if not impossible. And on top of that, Cammie’s mom is the school’s headmistress, and naturally, a former super-spy.

The Mill River Recluse- Darcie Chan

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book review, bookbub, darcie chan, fiction, historical fiction, self-published, the mill river recluse

Four Stars

The Mill River Recluse is one of many books I’ve recently picked up for free or very cheap via BookBub. Nearly everything on the daily email list is free or $0.99, so if it looks interesting, I’ll grab it. That’s exactly what I did with this book. It looked intriguing, and it was. It’s a quiet book; almost an anomaly in a world of fast-paced thrillers, fantasy and mystery.

This was a charming, warm-hearted story set in fictional Mill River, Vermont. On the hill overlooking this pretty town is a great marble mansion. It’s sole inhabitant is an old woman most of the town’s residents have never seen. Yet unbeknownst to them, she has been taking an interest in their lives for decades and has been an anonymous benefactor to many of them.

The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas

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alexandre dumas, book review, classic, fiction, historical fiction, the three musketeers

Four Stars

A classic that I haven’t read since I was ten. I remember devouring it on a transatlantic flight and really enjoying myself as the hours flew by. It was just as much fun this time. It’s a bit on the fluffy side, so not as weighty as some of the other classics, but that’s part of its charm.

It’s actually pretty fast-paced for a book from that time-period (1844), and even though there are some interludes that briefly take you out of the action, they don’t come close to anything like Hugo’s excursions to Waterloo or the Paris Sewers. Maybe Dumas wasn’t being paid by the word.

I was particularly struck by how well-drawn and appealing the main characters are. D’Artagnan of course, is an all-around delightful guy, whose adventures anyone would like to follow, but the characters of the musketeers are also well-drawn and sympathetic; even the somewhat ridiculous Porthos who usually plays for laughs is capable of pathos.

In addition, Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke of Buckingham are enjoyable foils to the boys.

I’m just not altogether pleased with the female characters. While Lady de Winter is delightfully bad, there seems to be a bit of madonna/whore dichotomy going on vis-a-vis the nearly saintly Constance Bonanceaux. Well, as saintly as a married woman who agrees to secret assignations with a man not her husband can be. But, she’s French, so it’s okay.

I was actually reading this by way of research for a novel I’m working on. Even though it will be fantasy, it’s set in that time period, and I was hoping to catch some period-sounding dialogue. Alas! I don’t think it will work, unless I want my book to sound kinda silly. I guess I’ll have to come up with my own lingo.

Still, now I’m interested in re-reading some of Dumas’ other great works like The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Still Life with Murder- P.B. Ryan

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book review, fiction, historical fiction, murder in a mill town, mystery, p b ryan, series, still life with murder

4 1/2 Stars

Still Life with Murder is the first installment in The Gilded Age Mystery series by Patricia Ryan, writing as P.B. Ryan. I’m beginning to realize that, while I enjoy a good mystery, I really enjoy those that are set in an interesting time period. That is, one that is not the present. Honestly, the present is kind of boring, for mysteries at least.

Set in Boston at the end of the Civil War, this book follows Nell Sweeney, a tenacious governess from the wrong side of the tracks. The eldest son of her employer, thought to have died at Andersonville has reappeared in Boston as a murder suspect.

Naturally, it doesn’t look good for the Army surgeon turned gambler/opium fiend, but Nell is convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove it. Nell has some secrets of her own, and interestingly, all is not revealed by the end of the book. So now, I’ll need to read the next one: Murder in a Mill Town. And  I probably will.