Review: Big Sky River by Linda Lael Miller

Big Sky River by Linda Lael MillerFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, large print, mass market paperback, audiobook
Genre: Contemporary romance
Series: Parable, Montana #3
Length: 318 pages
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Date Released: December 18, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Sheriff Boone Taylor has his job, friends, a run-down but decent ranch, two faithful dogs and a good horse. He doesn’t want romance—the widowed Montanan has loved and lost enough for a lifetime. But when a city woman buys the spread next door, Boone’s peace and quiet are in serious jeopardy.

With a marriage and a career painfully behind her, Tara Kendall is determined to start over in Parable. Reinventing herself and living a girlhood dream is worth the hard work. Sure, she might need help from her handsome, wary neighbor. But life along Big Sky River is full of surprises…like falling for a cowboy-lawman who just might start to believe in second chances.

My Review:

Who said that you never get a second chance to make a first impression?

The first impression that Tara Kendall and Boone Taylor made on each other seemed to be mutually terrible; she thought he was a redneck hick (if that wasn’t redundant) living in a rundown double-wide trailer spoiling her view of the Montana scenery.

He thought she was too much of a city-slicker to have half a chance of surviving as a chicken rancher on the outskirts of tiny Parable, Montana.

They drove each other way too crazy to be neutral about each other, especially considering that Tara bought Boone’s sister’s half of their parents’ land–the half that contained the house he grew up in.

It took a couple of years for them to come to an uneasy peace, and for either of them to acknowledge that those sparks hid something a lot hotter than mutual loathing. Loathing doesn’t burn nearly that bright.

Their children finally brought them together. Boone is forced to bring his sons home from his sister’s, four years after losing his young wife to cancer. Four years to realize that he not only had to live, but that he wanted to live.

Tara’s step-daughters were sent to visit for the summer. She came to Parable after a messy divorce. She might never have loved their father. He certainly never loved anyone more than he loved himself. But she loved his daughters as if they were her own.

Can these two wounded souls find their way together?

Escape Rating B+: Big Sky River, like the rest of the Parable, Montana series (Big Sky Country and Big Sky Mountain) is a romance that simmers slowly before it comes to a boil. If you haven’t read the previous books in the series, you have plenty of opportunity to fall in love with the “big sky” country along the way.

The good thing about Tara and Boone’s romance is that if you have read the whole series, you’ve seen the entire thing develop from their first meeting. We know how just badly it went. There’s always been a sense that where there’s this much smoke, there might eventually be fire, but this book is the first time that Boone has healed enough from the devastating loss of his wife to even think of getting involved with someone else.

There isn’t as much involvement with the town of Parable and the people there, but there is just enough to let readers catch up with old friends. Boone and Tara do live pretty far out of town.

This story is about the two of them finally finding some common ground, and about them becoming a family. The major theme besides the romance is Boone healing the rift between himself and his sons. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, has been trying to get him to see the light on that score since the beginning of the series.

This is a heartwarming western/small-town romance that I finished with a smile on my face. I want to start Big Sky Summer immediately to smile that smile again.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Shirt on His Back by Barbara Hambly

The Shirt on His Back by Barbara HamblyFormat read: print book borrowed from the library
Formats available: ebook, hardcover, paperback
Genre: Historical mystery
Series: Benjamin January, #10
Length: 256 pages
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Date Released: June 1, 2011
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Abishag Shaw is seeking vengeance for his brother’s murder – and Benjamin January is seeking money after his bank crashes. Far beyond the frontier, in the depths of the Rocky Mountains, both are to be found at the great Rendezvous of the Mountain Men: a month-long orgy of cheap booze, shooting-matches, tall tales and cut-throat trading. But at the rendezvous, the discovery of a corpse opens the door to hints of a greater plot, of madness and wholesale murder …

My Review:

There’s a banking crisis. Too many people lose everything they have invested when the banks fail, and their investments are suddenly worthless. Major banks close. Jobs are hard to come by. People who were doing mostly okay start to think they might lose their homes to foreclosure.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

But in The Shirt On His Back, the tenth of Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January historical mysteries, the banking crisis is the Panic of 1837, under the new Presidency of Martin Van Buren.

Ben January, a free man of color in New Orleans, is a Paris-trained surgeon who is not permitted to practice in the pre-Civil War U.S. In the South, he has to keep his papers with him at all times to prevent being falsely picked up as a runaway slave.

He makes his living as a piano player, and he is excellent at that profession. He also gives lessons to the mixed-race daughters of liaisons between the local planters and their mixed-race mistresses. Women just like his sisters.

His wife Rose runs a school for girls. But families cut back on lessons and school when times get tough. Then the bank closes, and their savings are lost.

Sometimes, Ben solves murders, by assisting the New Orleans Police in the person of Lieutenant Abishag Shaw. Shaw has come to trust Ben’s judgment, a far and delicate reach across race and class in that time and place that they have both come to value.

So when Shaw comes to Ben with a job offer, Ben takes it, no questions asked. He needs the money. And he trusts Shaw.

Ben should have asked some questions first, because Shaw sets out on the road to vengeance, to a place where no one will stay his hand, where no one will punish him for shooting the man who killed his brother.

1837 Rendezvous
1837 Rendezvous by Alfred Jacob Miller

But it is the journey of a lifetime. A trip into the Rocky Mountains, to see a way of life that was already dying. They are heading to a fur trappers’ rendezvous to trap a killer. Unless he traps them first.

Escape Rating B: The two things that stand out in this story are the portrait of the fur trappers’ rendezvous and that we finally get some hints about Shaw’s background.

By 1837, the world of the fur trappers was coming to an end, and some of them, at least, knew it. Beavers were being hunted to extinction. The Natives’ way of life was being undermined by “civilization”, disease and alcohol. Most of all, the pristine, uninhabited wilderness was getting crowded with colonists. Americans were moving towards the “Oregon country”.

There’s a patina of nostalgia throughout the story. Men who can see their world coming to an end, and Ben January’s yearning for the wife he left behind in New Orleans.

The story we follow is Shaw’s need to find the man who murdered his younger brother Johnny. The problem is that Shaw doesn’t know what the murderer, Frank Boden, even looks like. So we have a search, an investigation, and finally, some resolution, although not exactly the one that Shaw was hoping for.

Centennial by James MichenerThe murder investigation takes a backseat to the adventure story. Although the wilderness adventure is fascinating (and reminded me fondly of the early chapters of James Michener’s Centennial), Benjamin January’s story loses something when one of its most important characters is missing.

I missed New Orleans.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Jack Absolute by C.C. Humphreys

Jack Absolute by C.C. HumphreysFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Series: Jack Absolute, #1
Genre: Historical Fiction
Release Date: May 7, 2013 (U.S. edition)
Number of pages: 276 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Purchasing Info: Author’s website | Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Book Depository US | Book Depository (UK)

The year is 1777. As the war for American independence rages across the sea, London is swept off its feet by Jack Absolute, the dashing rogue in Richard Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals. That is, until the real Jack Absolute, former captain of the 16th Light Dragoons, returns after years abroad to discover this slander of his reputation.

Before he can even protest, he is embroiled in a duel over an alluring actress of questionable repute, and his only escape is the one he most dreads: to be pressed again into the King’s service—this time, as a spy for the British in the Revolutionary War.

My Thoughts:

Jack Absolute’s character is written in a way intended to make the reader think of an 18th century James Bond. One of the later Bonds, at the point where he’d begun to get a bit tired of the game and developed some self-reflection.

I certainly got some of that. Jack is a member of that very old profession, he is a spy for the English crown during the American Rebellion. He’s been a spy before, and he is pretty much dragooned into doing it again, in spite of his stated views that us Americans do have some justifications for our actions.

Playbill for The Rivals by Sheridan 1887If you’ve ever seen Sheridan’s play, The Rivals, you’ve already met Captain Jack Absolute, and it’s quite possible that you have seen the play. It’s famous for the character who gave us the word “malapropism”. That’s right, Mrs. Malaprop supposedly guards the virtue of the heroine in this classic romantic comedy/farce.

Jack Absolute is the romantic hero of the play. In the book, Sheridan the playwright is one of Jack’s friends. He made a hit out of trivializing and romanticizing a real incident in Jack’s life.

Jack’s own life is not a romance, not that he hasn’t played the part of lovesick fool on more than one occasion. As a spy, he’s played whatever role suited the occasion best in order to fulfill his mission.

This mission is in big trouble from the start. General John Burgoyne has been led to believe that there are thousands of Loyalists ready to take up arms against the Rebels as soon as he gives the word. And that equal numbers of Native Allies are eager to march with the British Army for the usual inducements.

As history tells us, those assumptions were wrong. Jack didn’t have the advantage of history, but what he did have was several years of experience living in America, including living with the Mohawk. He knew those beliefs couldn’t be right.

Jack had a secondary mission; find the spy within the British command staff, codenamed Diogenes. He thought he was looking for a military officer, not the woman he loved.

Verdict: I did think of James Bond, but mostly I thought of Jamie Fraser and Lord John Grey.

The incredibly, marvelously immersive work of historical fiction that is Jack Absolute kept me flipping pages long past bedtime. The author does a fantastic job capturing the sights and sounds of Colonial America, and of 18th century life. I felt I was there and didn’t want to leave.

Surrender of General Burgoyne by John
Surrender of General Burgoyne by John Trumbull, 1822

The depth of the portrait of life in the British military at this time period was reminiscent of Diana Gabaldon’s Lord John Grey series. Same period, similar perspective and eventually, place. Also, Jack Absolute and Jamie Fraser (Outlander) both knew, and fought with, General Simon Fraser of Balnain. Jack and Jamie (read Echo in the Bone if you’re curious) were both at the Battle of Saratoga, on opposite sides.

As an American, it is always interesting to read about the Revolution from the perspective of British. The histories written by the victors glorify the Revolution. The British called it a Rebellion. Perspective is everything.

I got swept away by this book, and not just because I found the period details enthralling, although I did. Jack was one of those characters who kept getting more and more fascinating as the book went on, because he was just so complex. He thought about what he was doing, he didn’t just obey orders. He was tired of the spy game and thought about what it meant, but he was good at his job. His relationship with the Mohawk people, and especially his blood brother Até, is not just a true brotherhood, but is also used as a way to explore the British and American relationship with the Native peoples and the devastation that is inevitably coming.

5-Stars-300x60

I give  Jack Absolute by C.C. Humphreys 5 arrow-tipped stars!

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Don’t Bite the Bridesmaid by Tiffany Allee

Don't Bite the Bridesmaid by Tiffany AlleeFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Paranormal romance
Series: Sons of Kane #1
Length: 209 pages
Publisher: Entangled: Covet
Date Released: May 27, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Alice Shepard needs one thing: a date for her sister’s wedding. And not just any date. A hunk who will make her fiancé rue the day he left her for her best friend. Her drop-dead gorgeous neighbor fits the bill—even if he is a bit quirky and never comes out during the day—and Alice has downed just enough appletinis to ask him. But she makes it quite clear that there will be no funny business.

Spending a week on a cruise ship full of humans while sleeping close to his sexy next-door neighbor sounds like a helluva bad idea to vampire Noah Thorpe. But his friends need time to get him out of a shotgun wedding—a vampire bonding that will tie his fate to a female vampire he’s never met. And Alice’s offer comes at just the right time.

What could possibly go wrong?

My Review:

Don’t Bite the Bridesmaid was a lot of fun to read, and it also had a couple of surprisingly deep points along with the cute love story (and I’m not just talking about the hero’s fangs, either!)

Of course Alice wants a date to her sister’s wedding. And not just because she doesn’t want to spend a week on a wedding cruise as a pitiful single (yuck!). The groom’s brother is her lying, cheating, scum-sucking ex-fiancé. Pride requires that she rub his face in how much better off she is without him.

Especially since they broke up because she caught him with his pants down, screwing her ex-best friend.

Now that their relationship is dead and gone, Alice is certain she’s better off without him (he had other bad habits) but that doesn’t mean she wants to be alone on that wedding cruise. Six appletinis later, she’s next door asking her hunky neighbor to be her “plus one” for a week on a boat.

Lucky for her Noah Thorpe needs an excuse to get out of town and out of touch. The Vampire Council (yes, you read that right) wants him to bond with some newly fledged vampire to keep whoever-she-is grounded until she learns control and supposedly to keep him from dying of ennui.

But Noah’s nowhere near that jaded yet, unlike his brother Alex, and he needs to disappear for a week so that his other brother Charles can lobby the Council, or their father Kane.

Besides, he likes Alice. Or rather, when she comes back the next morning, chastened and sober, to present her proposition a second time, Charles thinks its a great idea and Noah gets a visit from the green-eyed monster.

Noah thinks it will be easy to hide from the Council, and hide his secret vampiric identity, on a cruise ship with the most tempting woman he’s met in centuries.

He has absolutely no idea what he’s let himself in for. Or that it might be the best worst idea he’s ever had.

Escape Rating B: Don’t Bite the Bridesmaid was so much fun because it takes a bite out of so many tried-and-true romantic themes. Alice doesn’t want to go alone on that cruise, but she absolutely does not want her ex back, and with excellent reasons.

There are always convoluted vampire politics. I swear. That never changes. But the whole vampire bonding to keep both parties out of different kinds of trouble was a new twist. (We never do find out who the would-be bonded mate is. Her identity doesn’t seem to be important for the plot. Or this plot. After meeting Kane, I smell red herring)

Unlike the usual variations on this theme, Alice and some of her family already know about vampires. Her brother almost married one, but his vampire ex-fiancé left him at the altar. (I wish we had that story.)

I like Alice; she’s someone I’d want to meet. Based on Noah’s description of her neighborhood activism, she’s definitely someone I’d like to have in my town! Her family, especially her mom, are lots of fun.

Based on the ending I have hopes that there will be stories about Noah’s two brothers, Alex and Charles. Don’t Bite the Bridesmaid was such a delightful little treat, I’d be happy to read more about the Sons of Kane. I wouldn’t mind reading Kane’s story, either. His Mr. Mysterious thing at Cindy’s wedding was awesome.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Antiagon Fire by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Antiagon Fire by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.Format read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: ebook, hardcover, audiobook
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Imager Portfolio, #7
Length: 464 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Released: May 28, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

The hard-won battles fought in Imager’s Battalion have earned Quaeryt a promotion to commander, as well as an assignment to convince the Pharsi High Council in the nation of Khel to submit to Lord Bhayar’s rule, which is key to Bhayar’s ambition to unite all of Solidar. Joined by his pregnant wife Vaelora, who is also Bhayar’s sister, Quaeryt leads an army and a handful of imagers deeper into the hostile lands once held by the tyrannical Rex Kharst, facing stiff-necked High Holders, attacks by land and sea—including airborne fire launched by hostile imagers from the land of Antiago—and a mysterious order of powerful women who seem to recognize the great destiny that awaits Quareyt and Vaelora, as well as the cost of achieving it.

My Review:

In most epic fantasies, the theme is good vs. evil.   Often, specifically, some youngster discovers that he or she is a hero of legendary destiny and gathers a group of like-minded souls together to go out and face the dastardly grand pooh-bah of powerful wickedness.
Quaeryt Ryterson, the current hero of L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s Imager Portfolio, doesn’t really fit the mold, and neither does the Imager Portfolio series. I’ve enjoyed the story more for those differences.

Scholar by L. E. Modesitt Jr.Quaeryt started his part of the story, in Scholar, as a grown man who already knew what his powers were  and who had developed his own agenda. He planned to use his intelligence, and his “connection” with Lord Bhayar, ruler of Telaryn, to forge a safer and more secure place in society for people like himself, meaning people who were either scholars, imagers or both.

Neither scholars nor imagers, meaning magic-users, are highly respected in Quaeryt’s world. Imagers in particular faced fear, extreme prejudice, and even death for their talents. Scholars usually just lived in poverty and were disrespected.

There is no “great evil” in the Imager Portfolio. Only the evil that men do. But just as power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, Quaeryt faces a number of men who do quite a bit of evil in their desire to prevent Quaeryt from accomplishing his goals.

Especially since Quaeryt’s intelligence and education tend to result in exposure for the corrupt, and his loyal backing of his friend and patron Lord Bhayar result in the toppling of quite a few less enlightened rulers.

This is because Quaeryt has determined that the best way for him to get what he wants is for him to ably assist Bhayar in getting what HE wants, the unification of the Lidar continent under Bhayar’s rule. That assistance has resulted in Quaeryt becoming a military commander on campaign. A very able military commander who commands not just the loyalty of his troops, but also some special powers, because Quaeryt has become a powerful imager.

In Antiagon Fire, for the first time Quaeryt faces an enemy who knows how to fight against imagers. He also faces imagers in battle who have power equal to his own. And just as he sees everything he has worked for within his grasp, he faces the loss of all the he holds dear.

[Imager's Battalion by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.]Escape Rating A: Imager’s Battalion was about the military campaign, while Antiagon Fire is more about the diplomatic side of the conquest of Lidar. Both are about the Quaeryt’s long-term strategy to make a better future for imagers and scholars, and everyone else. Quaeryt is an idealist with a pragmatic streak.

He’s also utterly fascinating. He tries to never take the credit for anything he does, because he knows that his enemies will pounce (metaphorically speaking) and doom his quest.

In the middle of the story, the seeresses of Kell tell him that if he succeeds, no one will remember his name. He doesn’t care. It’s the doing of it that matters to him. In that moment, Quaeryt, together with his wife, Vaelora, reminded me a lot of Delenn and Captain Sheridan in Babylon 5, in the episode “Comes the Inquisitor“. They were the right people at the right time because they were willing to give their lives for each other, all alone in the dark, certain that someone else would take up the fight, whether anyone would remember their names or not. It was not about the glory. It’s not about the glory for Quaeryt, it’s about the goal. And about his love for Vaelora, although he never thought he’d get that lucky.

Nothing great is accomplished without cost. The ending left me open-mouthed in shock. And upset that the final book in the series, Rex Regis, probably won’t be out until the end of the year at the earliest.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Memorial Day 2013

Graves at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day
Gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend

This is the day we celebrate it, even though the original holiday is a few days from now.

Title 36 of the United States Code enshrines, not just the date, but also the meaning of the holiday and some instructions about the manner in which the holiday is supposed to be celebrated.

Memorial Day commemorates the brave men and women who have fallen while wearing the uniforms of the United States. While we remember, part of those “instructions” written into the law are to take time out to pray, in whatever manner each of us does so, to pray for permanent peace.

Memorial Day was originally Decoration Day, and it began in honor of the soldiers who died on both sides of the Civil War.

It’s the most painful trivia question ever: “What war caused the most American casualties?” In spite of technology-based killing machines, the answer is still the U.S. Civil War.

Union and Confederate Dead Gettysburg
Union and Confederate dead, Gettysburg Battlefield, PA

Because both sides were us.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s On My (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 5-26-13

Sunday Post

I’m going to make this a short and sweet Sunday Post. It’s a three day weekend here in the U.S. and I hope that you’re having a terrific time if that applies to you! (It’s a typical cloudy weekend in Seattle, but any three-day weekend is a great weekend)

Current Giveaway:

Lightning Rider by Jen GreysonLightning Rider by Jen Greyson (ebook)

Blog Recap:

B+ Review: The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro
C Review: Chasing Mrs. Right by Katee Robert
B+ Review: Lightning Rider by Jen Greyson
Guest Post on the Importance of Mentors by Author Jen Greyson + Giveaway
B Review: Doctor Who: Festival of Death by Jonathan Morris
B+ Review: Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers
Stacking the Shelves (46)

Antiagon Fire by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.Coming up this week:

Review: Antiagon Fire by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Review: Don’t Bite the Bridesmaid by Tiffany Allee
Review: The Shirt on His Back by Barbara Hambly
Review: Big Sky River by Linda Lael Miller

What are you reading this week?

Stacking the Shelves (46)

Stacking the Shelves

For those of you in the U.S., I hope you’re having a marvelous three-day weekend!

This week’s stack was originally relatively small, and then I opened my Hugo voting packet. The list below is far (very far) from everything in the packet, it’s just my first pass at the books I know I want to read. The full packet is ginormous.

Reading Reality Stacking the Shelves May 25 2013

For Review:
The Accidental Demon Slayer (Biker Witches #1) by Angie Fox
The Angel Stone (Fairwick Chronicles #3) by Juliet Dark
A Beautiful Heist (Agency of Burglary & Theft #1) by Kim Foster
The Black Country (Murder Squad #2) by Alex Grecian
Chasing the Shadows (Nikki and Michael #3) by Keri Arthur
Don’t Bite the Bridesmaid (Sons of Kane #1) by Tiffany Allee
The Garden of Stones (Echoes of Empire #1) by Mark T. Barnes
The Plague Forge (Dire Earth #3) by Jason M. Hough
A Study in Silks (Baskerville Affair #1) by Emma Jane Holloway
With This Kiss: The Complete Collection by Eloisa James

Purchased:
Sweet Starfire (Lost Colony #1) by Jayne Ann Krentz

Hugo Voting Packet:
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance (Vorkosigan Saga #15) by Lois McMaster Bujold
Chicks Dig Comics: A Celebration of Comic Books by the Women Who Love Them edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Sigrid Ellis
Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who edited by Deborah Stanish and L.M. Myles
Throne of the Crescent Moon (Crescent Moon Kingdoms #1) by Saladin Ahmed

Review: Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFeversFormat read: print book borrowed from the library
Formats available: ebook, hardcover
Genre: YA historical fiction
Series: His Fair Assassin, #2
Length: 405 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
Date Released: April 2, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Sybella’s duty as Death’s assassin in 15th-century France forces her return home to the personal hell that she had finally escaped. Love and romance, history and magic, vengeance and salvation converge in this thrilling sequel to Grave Mercy.

Sybella arrives at the convent’s doorstep half mad with grief and despair. Those that serve Death are only too happy to offer her refuge—but at a price. The convent views Sybella, naturally skilled in the arts of both death and seduction, as one of their most dangerous weapons. But those assassin’s skills are little comfort when the convent returns her to a life that nearly drove her mad. And while Sybella is a weapon of justice wrought by the god of Death himself, He must give her a reason to live. When she discovers an unexpected ally imprisoned in the dungeons, will a daughter of Death find something other than vengeance to live for?

My Review:

“Teenage ninja assassin nuns!” It’s still a concept that screams epic fantasy, isn’t it?

crouching tiger hidden dragonWhile Robin LaFevers’ series His Fair Assassin may read like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon set in medieval Brittany, there’s still no magic. It’s still historical fiction. Unless you count the heroine’s dreams of visitations from her god-saint, Mortain, as magic.

On the other hand, contemporaneous stories from the same period abound with people who thought they had spoken with either God or one of his saints. Why not a nun from the convent of death?

Death is a saint, Mortain, in this only very slightly alternate Middle Ages. The series opens with the truly awesome Grave Mercy (reviewed here) and like many readers, I have been eagerly awaiting the second installment.

grave mercy by Robin LaFeversGrave Mercy made the political machinations of late 15th century France and Brittany personal by making the reader see them through the eyes of the Mortain-trained assassin Ismae. She provided a compelling perspective on events that happened historically.

Dark Triumph illuminates what happened next, but the events that unfold are from a blank spot in the history. Anne of Brittany, the important personage, had fled the scene. History does not record much of what happened to the places and people she left behind.

Into this gap walks another of Mortain’s disciples. All of the assassins are women who would otherwise not have much agency in the medieval world, and it’s part of what makes them so fascinating to watch.

Sybella is the daughter of Anne’s greatest enemy, Alain d’Albret. In Dark Triumph, Sybella’s father is the person who has betrayed Anne, and is the person from whom she flees. He is also a precursor of Bluebeard, a man who has murdered all of his previous wives. (The man makes Henry VIII look positively benevolent!) One of the fascinations of this series is where the real history overlaps (and doesn’t) the fictional.

The abbess of Mortain’s convent has sent Sybella back to her father to spy out his secrets. She’s done this knowing that Sybella’s father abused her before, and will do so again the moment she returns. Sybella goes with the promise that she will get to assassinate her father when the time is right.

The abbess has lied to her. It is not the first time.

Instead, Sybella receives word that she is to free a prisoner in her father’s dungeon. This prisoner, the Beast of Warnoch, will rally troops for Anne of Brittany, if she can save him.

Of course, if she does manage to save him, her position as a spy will be revealed. Sybella decides that she will kill her father or die trying. She would rather be dead than let herself be tortured again.

Instead, the Beast kidnaps her. He ruins her plans. He saves her. And he keeps doing it, over and over again. Even after he discovers that she is the one responsible for his sister’s death.

Escape Rating B+: The freshness of the entire concept was so amazing in Grave Mercy that I was absolutely blown away. Dark Triumph still tells a good story, but it is an incredibly dark one.

One of the weaknesses of the first-person perspective is that the reader only knows what the heroine either tells another character, or chooses to reveal in self-talk. Sybella, the heroine of Dark Triumph, has learned the trick of making sure that her face and even her thoughts reveal nothing of her inner turmoil. It’s the only way she has been able to survive her horrific childhood.

But it makes her secret-keeping very murky, because she keeps a lot of things secret from herself–most of what she has endured is too painful to think about. Her past is shrouded in mists and pain. We know that it was awful, but we lose some of the ability to empathize, and we also miss some details in the backstory.

Sybella’s story is so full of drama, and the potential for tragedy, or triumph, that it is impossible to stop turning pages.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Doctor Who: Festival of Death by Jonathan Morris

Festival of Death by Jonathan MorrisFormat read: paperback provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: Science fiction
Series: Past Doctor Who Adventures, #35
Length: 320 pages
Publisher: BBC Books
Date Released: March 7, 2013 (reprint; originally published September 4, 2000)
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Stuck in the end of a hyperspace tunnel lies a huge, chaotic, space city known as the G-Lock — the end product of the most terrible intergalactic traffic jam in history. It has now been transformed into a death-themed park, where the major attraction is a death-simulator known as the Beautiful Death. However, the power generated by people enjoying the ride is being diverted to a mysterious destination. A creature called the Repulsion is on the loose, offering resurrection in two hundred year’s time to anyone who will surrender to it, allowing it to exist in the real world. Can the Doctor defeat it, and escape from the G-Lock before the interface between hyperspace and real space collapses?

Tom Baker and David Tennant as the DoctorThere are some serious “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey” bits in this story. The Doctor, Romana and K-9 cross and recross their own time-streams multiple times on a derelict, or soon-to-be-derelict, or just-in-the-middle-of-becoming-derelict, spaceship cum theme-park where the interface between hyperspace and real-space is becoming unstable.

And Romana is threatening to withdraw the Doctor’s TARDIS-driving privileges if he can’t pass his time travel proficiency test.

Care for a jelly baby?

Tom Baker as The DoctorIf you never forget your first Doctor, then the Fourth Doctor was my Doctor. All teeth and curls with his incredibly long scarf and floppy hat.

Before the Time War made even the thought of worrying about passing any exams back on Gallifrey completely pointless–because Gallifrey is gone.

I’ve always wondered what happened to Romana.

Festival of Death is very much a Fourth Doctor story. The Doctor is always running into trouble, and expecting that Romana and/or K-9 will get him out of it. He generally thumbed his rather large nose at any authority, but he was usually right about questioning the rules. And he usually did get arrested very quickly upon arrival. If he didn’t deserve it at the time, he generally did later.

In this story, there are a lot of points where the thing he’s being arrested for is something that he hasn’t done yet. At least from his perspective. Back to the timey-wimey stuff.

The story at heart is about the conundrum of “knowing then what you know now” and living life over. One alien race has that ability. One man has been systematically experimenting with those aliens in an attempt to re-live his life, in the hopes of erasing his past mistakes.

The First Law of Time Travel is not that forgiving.

Doctor Who: the Talons of Weng ChiangEscape Rating B: Reading Festival of Death made me want to go and watch some of my favorite Fourth Doctor episodes like The Talons of Weng-Chiang or Pyramids of Mars.

I enjoyed the story, but it reminded me of a couple of things; one, that it’s impossible to forget what came after: the Time War and the death of the Time Lords, and two, that books like this are for fans of the series. I can’t imagine coming into this cold.

Also, Romana was not my favorite companion of this Doctor’s, Give me Leela or Sarah Jane any day.

But it was great fun to go back and relive my Doctor’s adventures. I’d forgotten just how much of a treat these books can be!

TLC
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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.