Review: Chenoire by Susannah Sandlin + Giveaway

Posted on January 24, 2014January 20, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Paranormal
Length: 48 pages
Publisher: StoryFront
Date Released: December 18, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon

When Faith Garrity’s twin sister died, she lost a part of herself. Unable to move past the pain, the once-driven ornithologist is at risk of losing her career as well. To save her job, she heads to the oil-ravaged wetlands of Louisiana. There, in the bayou community of Chenoire, she encounters the handsome but guarded Zackary Préjean, still suffering from a great loss of his own.

She’s drawn to Zack, but soon finds that the Préjean family isn’t what it seems… They have dangerous secrets—and deadly enemies. Caught up in a feud that threatens the area’s uneasy truce, Faith and Zack must learn to trust each other. Survival will require enormous sacrifice, but it just might also give them both a way to move on.

My Review:

Susannah Sandlin, whether she is writing as Sandlin or as Suzanne Johnson, always does a fantastic job of painting extremely clear pictures in her readers’ minds of both New Orleans and the less familiar but much creepier Louisiana bayou country.

Chenoire also brings us back to the devastation caused by the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill , and the reminder that the damage was not just confined to shores frequented by tourists. The spill continued for months, and the effects are still being felt in coastal wetlands today.

It’s the aftermath of the disaster that sets up this story. Faith Garrity is an ornithologist who plans to study the effects of “storm-shock” on the avian population of the bayou. She believes that the oil invading the birds’ habitats changed their coloring.

Well, Faith has sort of a plan. What she really has is a concept that she hopes will get her academic career back on track, and a lot of desperation. She shows up during “gator season”, and can’t get a boat or a guide to take her where she needs to go.

She’s desperate because she lost her twin sister to an auto accident, and hasn’t managed to recover from her own personal disaster.

Faith gets sent where she needs to go, to make a bond with someone else who is alone. In the middle of absolutely nowhere, there’s supposed to be someone who might rent her a boat. Faith is sent to Chenoire, a very small town with a very big secret.

In Chenoire Faith finds herself in the middle of the Préjean family, and the dynamics between grown-up sons who can’t get over their father’s remarriage, and the woman who gave up her city life to marry into a place she can never be part of and where she’s resented at every turn.

All the Préjean sons are twins, except for Zack. Faith lost her twin. They have a common place from which to start at least a friendship, maybe more. Until Faith is caught in the middle of the Préjean family feud, and Faith learns way more than she bargained for; about Zack, about Chenoire, and about herself.

Escape Rating B: Chenoire is a short story, and I wish it were longer. I adore everything Susannah/Suzanne writes, but the tale hints at a deep backstory that I’d love to have seen.

Admittedly, I always want more backstory.

It isn’t difficult to guess the nature of the secret of Chenoire. Figuring out that the Préjean family, and their enemies, are all shapeshifters, is not hard. The story is in Faith realizing that it’s not just okay for her to be alive, but that it’s okay to be happy to be alive after losing her twin, combined with Zack figuring out that having at least a civil relationship with his stepmother does not mean that he doesn’t still mourn his mother’s loss.

We see the beginning of Faith’s relationship with Zack. This isn’t a romance, and what they have isn’t insta-love. Thank goodness. They have a connection and the beginnings of both friendship and trust, which is a fine start for any relationship. We see the start of their healing, but not the end. We leave the story with hope that they get there.

Chenoire reminds me a lot of the author’s other recent backcountry story, Christmas in Dogtown. The story isn’t quite the same, but the settings are similar; both Chenoire and Dogtown are lost towns with deep roots in the misty past of legend. They both contain legends that still live in the present, but must be kept secret. And they both conclude with that hope of a happy ending, combined with the sense that there are still magical places in the world.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Susannah is giving away the following prizes:

1 $25 Amazon gift card
2 $10 Amazon gift cards
2 Author swag packs- open to US Shipping (books, swag)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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: Deeper by Robin York

Posted on January 23, 2014January 18, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: New Adult romance, Contemporary romance
Series: Caroline and West #1
Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Bantam
Date Released: January 28, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

When Caroline Piasecki’s ex-boyfriend posts their sex pictures on the Internet, it destroys her reputation as a nice college girl. Suddenly her once-promising future doesn’t look so bright. Caroline tries to make the pictures disappear, hoping time will bury her shame. Then a guy she barely knows rises to her defense and punches her ex to the ground.

West Leavitt is the last person Caroline needs in her life. Everyone knows he’s shady. Still, Caroline is drawn to his confidence and swagger—even after promising her dad she’ll keep her distance. On late, sleepless nights, Caroline starts wandering into the bakery where West works.

They hang out, they talk, they listen. Though Caroline and West tell each other they’re “just friends,” their feelings intensify until it becomes impossible to pretend. The more complicated her relationship with West gets, the harder Caroline has to struggle to discover what she wants for herself—and the easier it becomes to find the courage she needs to fight back against the people who would judge her.

When all seems lost, sometimes the only place to go is deeper.

My Review:

Deeper wraps a heart stoppingly beautiful love story around a life-shattering problem, and shows the strength of spirit of a young woman who grows up stronger for her broken places.

But the problem that begins the story nearly breaks Caroline’s soul and spirit, and is unfortunately all too real in the 21st century combination of constant connectivity, cyberbullying and sexting, mixed with the age-old issues of sexual harrassment and sexual abuse, usually by males over females.

The resultant nasty cocktail is revenge porn, where someone takes what society considers “dirty” pictures of a young woman and bombs them all over the internet without her consent. Because the woman is a legal adult, even though she is photographed without her consent, posting the pictures online is legal. Anything that happens to her afterwards is considered her problem.

And that’s what happens to Caroline Piasecki. Her ex-boyfriend snapped a picture of her giving him a blowjob with his cellphone. When they broke up, he posted the picture everywhere he could think of. Then, of course, he denied having posted it. As if it could have been anyone else.

The damage was done. The scumbag didn’t just post the picture, he posted her name and the name of the college they attended. He wanted to make sure that he trashed her reputation. That everyone who saw her on campus, that anyone who ever Googled her name, saw that picture first.

It was one hell of a spiteful revenge for breaking up with him. Especially since Caroline was planning to go to law school, and that picture is not going to make getting recommendations for internships at law firms any easier.

Caroline is someone who has always had a perfectly orderly life, and now everything is completely out of order. Her plans are ruined. She has tried so very hard to be good. To be careful.

Her universe is shattered. The whispers follow her everywhere. And she can’t help but start to feel them reach inside of her.

It takes Caroline a long time, and a lot of help from her friends, to start to live her life again. A life that is not defined by the whispers and lies.

There is one hell of a lot of strength involved on her part. Also pretty much of a “two-steps forward-one step back” approach to dealing with moving on from the very huge problem.

But the biggest assist she gets is from West Leavitt. He represents a different choice in life. Lots of different choices. West is a young man who seems to be living in the moment, but actually isn’t. Where Caroline plans everything, West looks spontaneous.

But he’s not. What he is, is someone from an entirely different life who has grabbed this brief moment of time for himself, because he’s sure it will be taken away any second. What he doesn’t reveal is much about himself.

At first, West gives Caroline something that no one else does; a space with no BS. He may not disclose much, but he also doesn’t expect her to filter what she’s feeling. She doesn’t have to pretend to be okay.

And out of that lack of pretense, comes everything.

Escape Rating A+: Deeper is a story that will haunt you long after you turn the final page. This is a book that lives up to the promise of the genre tag New Adult; it delivers a deeper, richer story than a young adult novel. In New Adult the protagonist is supposed to have a problem to solve that will have an impact on their adult life. There are no easy answers in this book, only hard questions and tough solutions.

Deeper is Caroline’s journey. She starts the story in the midst of a meltdown of epic proportions, and she’s melting down for reasons that are big and real. She treats the “porn attack” as a problem to be solved, or hidden from, and can’t face people’s scorn. So she hides. She feels as dirty as if she deserved the comments people, mostly men, fling at her everywhere.

The story is her transformation from the young woman who is victimized to the one who stands up for herself. In the beginning, she feels like she IS the pictures. She feels abused. In the end, the pictures are the pictures, but they are not herself. This does not mean she is not being attacked, because she still is, but she is owning her defense.

West’s story is told in counterpoint to Caroline’s. He comes from such a different place than she does, and he conceals everything about who he really is until nearly the end of their relationship. Their love story is very slow building, and that’s a terrific thing. Caroline isn’t ready to love someone until she stops being a victim and starts taking control of her life. And part of that control is telling West that they can’t have a real relationship until he is willing to admit that what they have is actually a relationship.

He wants to protect her, but part of the point of the story is that Caroline has gotten strong enough that she doesn’t need his protection any more. She needs to make her own decisions, and for that to work, she needs his trust, and his truth.

The ending of Deeper will make you reach for the kleenex, because it concludes, exactly where it should, but not where you want it to.

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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: Late Last Night by Lilian Darcy + Giveaway

Posted on January 22, 2014January 20, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> Book Giveaway> book reviews> ebook giveaway> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Contemporary romance, Western romance
Series: River Bend #0.5
Length: 112 pages
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Date Released: January 9, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon

It’s May 1996 and Marietta High School English teacher Kate MacCreadie is almost at the end of her rope, torn between the demands of her work and her heavy involvement in helping her younger brother Rob and his wife Melinda take care of their five young children on the MacCreadie family ranch.

When Marietta’s fine-looking new sheriff, Harrison Pearce, pulls Kate over for her third traffic violation in as many months, they both know it’s a sign that something has to give.

Kate finds it almost a relief to be told by this calm, strong man to get her life in order, and then she just keeps on seeing him – at school after there’s been a suspicious break-in, on the evening of the prom when he’s off duty and driving his nephew and friends to the event in one of his brother’s gorgeous vintage cars.

Late that night, after prom is over, a tragedy at River Bend Park brings Kate and Harrison together yet again, and this time, in the highly charged atmosphere, Kate discovers that she never wants to let him go. But with his divorce still fresh, is Harrison ready for someone new?

My Review:

Late Last Night is the short romantic tale that links the more western-themed Copper Mountain Rodeo series to the author’s new River Bend series. Based on this intro, the River Bend series starts out with more of a small-town romance flavor.

Both series take place in and around Marietta, Montana, which always seems like a town that would be terrific to visit. And while it is not necessary to have read the Copper Mountain Rodeo books to enjoy Late Last Night, the series is great if you enjoy western-themed romance.

This story takes place in 1996, so it’s a bit of a trip back in time for some of the characters that we’ve met in the other series.

Kate MacCreadie is trying to both help her brother take care of his five kids and keep up her full-time job at Marietta High School. It’s not that her brother Rob isn’t willing or able to take care of his kids, or that there isn’t a Mrs. MacCreadie, because he is, and there is.

But Rob is running the family ranch, and Melinda MacCreadie is something beyond scatterbrained. (Their complete story is revealed in Rodeo Sweethearts). But in 1996, Kate doesn’t know why Melinda isn’t any help, all Kate knows is that as long as she continues to be nearly a full-time caregiver at her brother’s house AND have a full-time job, she’s going to either start hating someone, or she’s going to kill somebody.

Literally kill somebody, because the new sheriff keeps having to pull her over for a series of driving offenses. Kate speeds. And she misses stop signs. And her taillight is out. Mostly she just drives too fast because she’s in too much of a hurry and not paying attention.

She also likes running into Sheriff Harrison Pierce, she just wishes it wasn’t quite so embarrassing for her when it keeps happening in his line of duty. Kate isn’t aware that Harrison keeps pulling her over because he isn’t quite in a position to ask her out.

Not until his divorce is final.

Harrison tells Kate that she needs to get her life in order before someone dies as a result of her racing thoughts. When he figures out that he’s giving Kate advice he needs to take himself, the steps they each take to move forward with their lives lead them straight to each other.

Escape Rating B+: Late Last Night has a lot going for it. The love story has just the right amount of sexual tension, and it makes sense that the characters are cautious in the circumstances. Unlike a lot of very short novellas, this one is just the right length, it starts at a turning point for Kate, and comes to an ending that feels right for the characters without feeling rushed. Finally, although this story is a setup for the River Bend series, the need to get things setup doesn’t overwhelm the story that needs to be told in this book.

While it isn’t necessary to have read the entire Copper Mountain Rodeo series (Tempt Me, Cowboy, Marry Me, Cowboy, Promise Me, Cowboy and Take Me, Cowboy), if you like western romances you’ll enjoy them a lot. I definitely did. But reading Rodeo Sweethearts absolutely helps flesh out Kate’s background, and it’s short, sweet and free.

In Late Last Night, we find out more about how Kate feels than we do about Harrison, at least partly because she’s in the bigger pickle at the beginning. She wants to help her brother, but she needs to have a life. And Rob desperately needs the help, so Kate leaving is going to cause a lot of disruption.

Harrison, on the other hand, his divorce has been coming for a long time. And he recognizes his part in what went wrong. It feels like he’s closer to who he needs to be from the beginning, but it takes quite a leap of faith for him to put his heart on the line. Again.

The ending of the story is tragic, suspenseful and sets up the River Bend series. There’s something seriously wrong in Marietta, and I want to see if Harrison is part of solving it.

GIVEAWAY

Lilian and Tule Publishing are giving away an ebook copy of Late Last Night to one lucky winner! To enter the giveaway, just fill out the rafflecopter. This giveaway is open to all!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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.

Guest Post by Susan Sloate on Writing about the Kennedy Assassination

Posted on January 21, 2014January 19, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | blog tours> Guest Posts

Today’s guest post is from Susan Sloate, one of the authors of today’s featured review book, Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition. Her topic is the continued fascination with the Kennedy Assassination, an event that took place over 50 years ago.

Like the author, I was also in the first grade when JFK was assassinated. Unlike most children my age, I was home that week, sick with tonsillitis, so I don’t have that clear-cut memory of a school announcement. But the world still changed that day.

And without that one shattering moment, other equally heart-breaking events probably might not have taken place; the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

Many authors have gone back and imagined the different course that history would have taken if JFK had lived, because those moments in Dallas feel like a turning point that overshadows history.

Why Write about the Kennedy Assassination?
By Susan Sloate

Why write about an event that took six seconds to occur, and that is, in the words of one reviewer, ‘probably the most written-about crime in history’? Why add yet another book to the cartloads of books appearing on the 50^thanniversary? Why, in other words, bring it up yet again? What does it matter?

You don’t realize, especially when you’re very young, when an event cuts straight through your heart. I realized on 9/11 that something enormous and heart-breaking was occurring—and as I wept I knew I would remember it always, and forever after, it would hurt. But I was at that point in my 40’s and a mother of two small children. The impact—on them and me—was so clear. And I’d been through national tragedies before.

I didn’t realize the impact when I heard the announcement in my first-grade classroom, though I never forgot it. I don’t remember having much reaction at all. Two years before, when my nursery-school bus driver drove us home, he entertained us with the story of Lincoln’s assassination. God knows why you’d tell this to four-year-olds, but I was very interested and filed it away in my mind. (And grew up to write a book about Lincoln—everything is potential fodder!)

So when the news came from our principal, Mr. Kahan, that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas that afternoon, I don’t remember any of my classmates reacting as their older brothers and sisters did—with shock and grief and anger. We were children. We didn’t realize what it all meant. (And in my case, having heard about Lincoln so recently, I just figured that was how presidents got out of office.) I remember my twenty-something teacher announcing at once that we were going to lay aside our work and instead, each write a letter to Mrs. Kennedy, telling her how sorry we were for her family. It was what you did in 1963. Mrs. Kennedy, apparently, received millions of these notes from all over the world, in a massive outpouring of grief.

I do remember looking at my parents’ copies of Life and Look magazines. I remember in particular the aerial photo of the President’s casket, draped with the flag, as it lay in state at the Capitol. Its imprint sank deep into my memory. The photo strip of the Zapruder film reproduced in Life—I saw that too, and it touched something deep inside me.

Several years later—I was twelve or so—I would come home from school to find my mother baking bread. The clearest image of that is the log-shaped loaf she would set on the counter to rise, covering it with a clean kitchen towel—thin colored stripes on a white background. Every time I saw it, it reminded me again of that flag-draped casket.

I grew up and read a few books about the assassination and found them interesting. But I didn’t realize how much the event had clutched me to its heart until 1992, when I saw Oliver Stone’s brilliant film JFK.

I took a long meditative walk and asked myself, with all the people who knew it was going to happen, why didn’t the right people find out in time to stop it? And I began to imagine what I would do if suddenly, I could travel miraculously back to that vanished world and interfere with the history that was.

With writers, it’s just a step from daydreaming to planning—and before I knew it, I was sitting down to type some pages. None of them remain in the finished novel, which became Forward to Camelot. It would be years before I’d pull in my friend Kevin Finn as my co-author, and more years before we’d even figure out a way through the maze of information. But I knew that what I was going to do was fix what went wrong in November 1963. I was going to make things turn out differently for the President and the country.

The urge to ‘fix it’, to make the bad things go away, is a motivation for many writers, I think. It’s certainly mine: to take something bad and using the alchemy of structure, plot and character, turn it into something beautiful.

So why write again about the most written-about crime in history? Because this time, through a brave heroine and against impossible odds, Kevin and I unraveled the threads of history and set them right. And when I hear from readers, “How I wish this was true”, I know that our mission succeeded, in their dreams and in ours.

ABOUT SUSAN SLOATE
SUSAN SLOATE is the author of 20 previous books, including the recent bestseller Stealing Fire and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new genre: the self-help novel. The original 2003 edition of Forward to Camelot became a #6 Amazon bestseller, took honors in three literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production.
Susan has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way!, which won the silver medal in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest on The History Channel. Amelia Earhart: Challenging the Skies is a perennial young-adult Amazon bestseller. She has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, managed two recent political campaigns and founded an author’s festival in her hometown outside Charleston, SC.

Review: Forward to Camelot 50th Anniversary Edition by Susan Sloate and Kevin Finn

Posted on January 21, 2014January 19, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: time travel, alternate history
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Drake Valley Press
Date Released: August 29, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

WHERE WERE YOU THE DAY KENNEDY WAS SAVED? On the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination comes a new edition of the extraordinary time-travel thriller first published in 2003 with a new Afterword from the authors. On November 22, 1963, just hours after President Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One using JFK’s own Bible. Immediately afterward, the Bible disappeared. It has never been recovered. Today, its value would be beyond price. In the year 2000, actress Cady Cuyler is recruited to return to 1963 for this Bible-while also discovering why her father disappeared in the same city, on the same tragic day. Finding frightening links between them will lead Cady to a far more perilous mission: to somehow prevent the President’s murder, with one unlikely ally: an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald. Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition brings together an unlikely trio: a gallant president, the young patriot who risks his own life to save him, and the woman who knows their future, who is desperate to save them both. History CAN be altered …

My Review:

One of the historic events that alternate history writers LOVE to play with is the Kennedy Assassination. What if John F. Kennedy had not been killed on November 22, 1963? What if that brief period of bright hope was not extinguished so tragically? Would the U.S., would the world, be a brighter place now? Or does the tragedy make JFK seem nobler than he was, or would have been?

Forward to Camelot is the story of one attempt to change that history, but rather than attempt to focus on the broad sweep of the last 50 years, the authors have chosen to view the change through the lens of one person’s life. There is also more than a bit of science fiction “hand-wavium” regarding the method of time travel.

And it doesn’t matter. It’s the story of that brief period in November 1963 that compels. Using the point of view of a woman from the year 2000 makes it just that much easier for us to be swept along by the events.

The story pulls us along because we get set up right along with the main character. Cady Cuyler is sent back to 1963 to retrieve a priceless artifact, not to change history–or so she thinks. As an actress, she feels that she is being prepped to play a role, the part of a 20-something woman in Dallas in 1963. The world she is stepping into is both familiar and different.

While her employers want her to retrieve the Bible used to swear in President Johnson, Cady is willing to do this crazy thing in the hopes of saving her father. He also disappeared on November 22, 1963. Her mother has never recovered.

By inserting Cady into the past a few days before the assassination, we get immersed with her. She meets her father, and discovers that he’s not quite the loving, caring husband her mother portrayed. But while he’s hitting on her, he offers her a job as a temporary switchboard operator at his import/export business.

The more Cady sees, the more she realizes that things are not the way she was told they were. Not just because her father is no knight in shining armor, but because there is something terrible going on and he is in it up to his neck.

Her father has damned himself in a way that Cady can’t forgive. He is part of the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. The only person who might be able to help her save the President is the person she least expects to be on her side, Lee Harvey Oswald.

But then, nothing in 1963 is what she thought it would be. Her father is trying to kill the President and Oswald is helping to save him. Cady might never get back to her own time, but if she can save JFK, it doesn’t matter.

Escape Rating B+: This is one of those stories that absolutely shouldn’t work, but it definitely does. I kept carrying it around, wanting to get just a few more pages read.

This book is a conspiracy theorist’s dream. Not just that Oswald was set up by the CIA and FBI, but that there was a separate conspiracy planning to assassinate Kennedy in order to send troops back to Cuba to fight Castro. It sounds wild now, but it makes sense in the historical context. Even more fascinating, the type of coverup outlined in the book has a basis in evidence released in the 1980s and 1990s due to Freedom of Information Act requests. While the coverup may not have been quite as dramatic as written, that one occurred is pretty easy to believe, especially post-Watergate.

But it’s Cady’s story that kept this reader glued to the story. The way that she takes the information that she finds and keeps running with it, despite the odds and the insane things that keep happening. Would someone try to save JFK? Yes, quite probably. But the story, her story, is all in how she does it. She starts out not having a lot of confidence, thinking that real life happens to other people. Going back to the past she grows up, she finds her courage, she saves the President because she saves herself first. The cool thing is that she does it twice.

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

Posted on January 20, 2014February 8, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Steampunk
Series: Craft Sequence #1
Length: 336 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Released: October 2, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.

My Review:

One of the foundational concepts of this story is that practicing law is roughly equivalent to practicing necromancy. That what we would call a law firm this universe would consider to be a partnership in a craft firm, where the Craft involved is the Craft of resurrecting the dead. Contract law is all about siphoning living energy from people.

On the other hand, that IS what a lot of people think lawyers do in this world, too.

Another construct underpinning this world is the idea of a world where gods are created and/or maintained by the worship of their followers. (This is an idea that Neil Gaiman took to an entirely different conclusion in American Gods.)

So we have the “legal” question of what happens when a god dies with contracts outstanding. And since Kos Everburning is a god, he always has outstanding contracts. After all, he was supposed to live forever. And he will. The question is who will control his resurrection; his worshippers or the opposing forces who have bought up those contracts that are about to default.

Into this very hot mess the author thrusts two characters in search of a purpose; the Craftswoman Tara, who must figure out who is behind Kos’ death before the spiral of destruction consumes her, and the very junior engineer-priest Abelard, who had the misfortune to be the first to discover that his god was dead.

Neither Tara nor Abelard are in positions of power or authority. Tara is less than a junior associate of her Craft firm; her employment is probationary. Abelard is the most junior priest in the order, and the god he worships died on his watch. If things go badly, the resurrected Kos may not even care for his people.

But Tara is intelligent and most importantly, persevering. As the chain of dead bodies and attempted assassinations gets longer and longer, Tara and Abelard doggedly conduct an investigation whose object is increasingly familiar even as the methods they pursue become more imbued with Craft and magic.

Who had the means, the motive and the opportunity to kill this god? Who needs to kill to keep this secret? And even more basic, and more important, who benefits most from the death of Kos?

Escape Rating A: Now I understand why people raved about this book–raved to the point where the author was nominated for the Campbell Award in 2013. The worldbuilding is absolutely phenomenal. Just the combination of contract law and necromancy is equal parts stunning and sly.

Tara and Abelard make an interesting pair of “detectives”. Tara is the one with the training, but she spends much of the story doubting herself and her ability not merely to solve the case, but simply to do her job well enough to remain employed. She constantly second-guesses herself. Part of her doubt isn’t about ability, it’s about figuring out where she wants to be.

Abelard is fascinating because he never loses faith. He knows his god is dead–after all, he’s seen the body. And yet, he still believes, and because of that belief he keeps going no matter how badly things seem to be going.

Although it is relatively easy to figure out who the ‘bad guy” is, his motives are not so easy to discern. The game he is playing has been very long and extremely convoluted. His henchpeople are not easily discovered. And even though I guessed who, the why, the what and the how, kept me flicking pages furiously at the end.

For anyone who enjoys complicated plots and intricate mysteries woven into their complex worldbuilding, Three Parts Dead is the start of a spellbinding series.

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s On My (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 1-19-14

Posted on January 19, 2014January 19, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Book Giveaway> ebook giveaway> Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

We live in Seattle…and the Seahawks are in the NFC Championship game this afternoon. I had this brilliant idea to watch the football game today, but there’s a funny stumbling block.

We don’t have cable. We don’t watch enough TV while it’s being broadcast to justify it. We stream everything, but next day or later. I think we use the Amazon Prime subscription mostly for the cheaper streaming.

Galen is still trying to figure out whether we can watch the game live without paying for the view. So to speak. So maybe we’ll watch the game. Or maybe I’ll just read!

Current Giveaways:

Steal Me, Cowboy by Kim Boykin; ebook copy
Tourwide Giveaway: $50 Gift Card from winner’s choice of etailer and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers gift basket from Crista McHugh
Tourwide Giveaway: $50 Gift Card or Spectra Nova necklace, winner’s choice courtesy of Cindy Spencer Pape

Blog Recap:

B Review: Steal Me, Cowboy by Kim Boykin + Giveaway
B+ Review: Ashes & Alchemy by Cindy Spencer Pape
Guest Post by Author Cindy Spencer Pape on Escapist Fiction + Giveaway
B Review: The Sweetest Seduction by Crista McHugh + Giveaway
B+ Review: Gossamer Wing by Delphine Dryden
A+ Review: After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn
Stacking the Shelves (74)

Coming Next Week:

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone (review)
Forward to Camelot by Susan Sloate with Kevin Finn (blog tour review)
Late Last Night by Lilian Darcy (blog tour review + giveaway)
Deeper by Robin York (review)
Chenoire by Susannah Sandlin (blog tour review + giveaway)

Stacking the Shelves (74)

Posted on January 18, 2014January 16, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

As this posts, I am at RustyCon, hopefully resisting the temptation to buy more books in the Dealer’s Room.

But the spring book previews have resulted in a few NetGalleys finding their way to my iPad. Binge-watching Call the Midwife and Longmire account for some of the library borrowing. Who ever said that television watching keeps people from reading?

kindness goes unpunished by criag johnson

secrets of the lost summer by carla neggers

that night on thistle lane by carla neggers

blades of the old empire by anna kashina

For Review:
Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold
The Bees by Laline Paull
Blades of the Old Empire (Majat Code #1) by Anna Kashina
Cider Brook (Swift River Valley #3) by Carla Neggers
The Dreamer Volume 3 by Lora Innes
The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
Late Last Night (River Bend #0.5) by Lilian Darcy
Thrown for a Curve (Perfect Fit #2) by Sugar Jamison

Borrowed from the Library:
Boots Under Her Bed by Jodi Thomas, Jo Goodman, Kaki Warner and Alison Kent
Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
Kindness Goes Unpunished (Walt Longmire #3) by Craig Johnson
Secrets of the Lost Summer (Swift River Valley #1) by Carla Neggers
That Night on Thistle Lane (Swift River Valley #2) by Carla Neggers

Review: After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn

Posted on January 17, 2014January 19, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by Edelweiss
Formats available: Hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genre: urban fantasy, superhero romance
Series: Golden Age #1
Length: 304 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Date Released: April 12, 2011
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

It’s not easy being a superhero’s daughter….

Carrie Vaughn has captured legions of fans with her wildly popular Kitty Norville novels. Now she uses her extraordinary wit and imagination to tell a sensational new story about superhuman heroes—and the people who have to live with them.

Most people dream of having superheroes for parents, but not Celia West. The only daughter of Captain Olympus and Spark, the world’s greatest champions, she has no powers of her own, and the most exciting thing she’s ever done is win a silver medal in a high school swim meet. Meanwhile, she’s the favorite hostage of every crime boss and supervillain in Comemrce City. She doesn’t have a code name, but if she did, it would probably be Bait Girl, the Captive Wonder.

Rejecting her famous family and its legacy, Celia has worked hard to create a life for herself beyond the shadow of their capes, becoming a skilled forensic accountant. But when her parents’ archenemy, the Destructor, faces justice in the “Trial of the Century,” Celia finds herself sucked back into the more-than-mortal world of Captain Olympus—and forced to confront a secret that she hoped would stay buried forever.

My Review:

Why did I wait so long to read this?

That’s not a coherent review, but it was my first thought. I poured through this in an afternoon, barely stopping for breath or meals. After the Golden Age is awesome stuff.

It’s a superhero story. But really, it’s a post-superhero story. It’s the origin and the aftermath all rolled into one glorious exploding KA-POW!

It also reminded me a little bit of The Incredibles. What do the superheroes do when they aren’t out there fighting crime? How would they raise a non-superpowered child?

How would you feel if you were the mundane child of the Fantastic Four? If everyone around you had a secret identity, and you were just “original recipe human”?

It’s pretty easy to walk in Celia West’s shoes, and feel that every day would be a major blow to her self-confidence. If most people either emulate their parents or choose lives in reaction against them, well, without superpowers Celia’s choices were limited. Emulation was out.

She chose reaction. Instead of a spandex uniform, she became a forensic accountant, a job most people consider the most boring option on the planet. Of course, that was after a teenage rebellion where she tried the path of evil. For two whole months.

After having been kidnapped. Again. Celia gets kidnapped a lot. It happens so often she’s a bit bored by the whole thing.

As an adult, Celia has tried to create a life that doesn’t reflect the glow of her parents’ super-shininess, no matter many assumptions people make about how wonderful it must have been to grow up in the Olympiads’ inner circle, or how often people try to use her to get close to her famous parents.

But then her boss asks her to bring her accounting skills to bear on the latest “trial of the century”. (There’s always a trial of the century, haven’t you noticed?) The world’s greatest supervillain, The Destructor, has finally been called to account for his misdeeds, not for his heinous destruction, but for his financial chicanery. (This is classic, Al Capone was finally convicted for tax evasion)

But The Destructor is a combination of Kryptonite and Achilles’ Heel for both Celia and The Olympiad. As Celia unravels the winding trail of his black ops’ funding, she finds an origin story she never expected to uncover. And with it, the birth of a conspiracy theory that will bring down the foundation of everything that the good people of Commerce City have ever believed in.

But she will also discover the truth about herself.

Escape Rating A+: After the Golden Age is about the creation and destruction of legends. We find it so easy to put people up on pedestals, and even easier to pull them down. While it’s amazing how quickly the population is manipulated to turn on their heroes, it’s also easy to understand. We’ve seen it happen in real life.

Celia West is the main point of view character, a normal person in a family of supers. She is still recovering, almost atoning, from one act of teenage rebellion. She has had to define her own self-worth from a perspective where nearly everyone, including her own parents, has always judged her as “less-than” because she isn’t super.

So many people have tried to use her to get close to her family; she’s accustomed to it. But when her boss does it, her research deconstructs the legend. Her process of discovery is meticulous without ever being dull, and it occurs on two layers. For each scrap of history she uncovers, she also finds reaches a bit more of her own truth.

After the Golden Age reads like myth creation. And like the best myths, it feels true.

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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: Gossamer Wing by Delphine Dryden

Posted on January 16, 2014January 9, 2014 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Format read: ebook purchased from Amazon
Formats available: Paperback, ebook
Genre: steampunk romance
Series: Steam and Seduction #1
Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Date Released: November 5, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

A Spy. An Airship. And a Broken Heart.

After losing her husband to a rogue French agent, Charlotte Moncrieffe wants to make her mark in international espionage. And what could be better for recovering secret long-lost documents from the Palais Garnier than her stealth dirigible, Gossamer Wing? Her spymaster father has one condition: He won’t send her to Paris without an ironclad cover.

Dexter Hardison prefers inventing to politics, but his title as Makesmith Baron and his formidable skills make him an ideal husband-imposter for Charlotte. And the unorthodox undercover arrangement would help him in his own field of discovery.

But from Charlotte and Dexter’s marriage of convenience comes a distraction—a passion that complicates an increasingly dangerous mission. For Charlotte, however, the thought of losing Dexter also opens her heart to a thrilling new future of love and adventure.

My Review:

Gossamer Wing is a mixture of “pretend marriage” with “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” in a steamy (and somewhat angsty) steampunk world.

The alternate history is quite fun, the romance is suitably hard won and the steampunk adds just the right amount of engineered insanity to go along with the derring-do.

We have the engineer and the lady spy, entering into a pretend marriage for the good of jolly old England. Except that the marriage is real, and there will be a real divorce when the mission is over.

Or maybe not.

Lady Charlotte Moncrieffe is three things; daughter of an English secret agent, widow of an English secret agent, and pilot of the only airship light enough to fly over Paris at night. The mission is hers.

Dexter Hardison is also three things; a world-reknowned engineer, a baron, and unmarried. He is the best candidate to play Charlotte’s temporary besotted husband.

He’s already carried out several engineering commissions for her, he just didn’t know that her little dirigible, the Gossamer Wing, was a secret project of the government. He also didn’t know that the lady was beautiful. Or tempting.

Charlotte plans to go to Paris to retrieve the secret plans that her first husband hid on the roof of the opera house, just before the war ended. Their honeymoon and his subsequent death prevented him from retrieving them.

Dexter plans to finish several engineering commissions for the government, help to conceal Charlotte’s true mission, and woo Charlotte.

Charlotte believes that emotion clouds judgement. But then, she’s spent the four years since her first husband’s death pretending that she has none.

She learns differently. But when they arrive in Paris, her husband’s killer lays in wait to see if he can retrieve the secret plans that were his downfall.

Escape Rating B+: The steampunk in Gossamer Wing turns it into deliciously frothy fun, with a whole lot of steam heat in the romantic tension between Dexter and Charlotte.

Charlotte is interesting because she has trained herself to be a perfect agent; she’s always cool and controlled. She’s an actress playing a part because it means her life. She loved her first husband, but he was a part of her life long before their very short marriage. Her mission is about finishing his work. She doesn’t have a life beyond it. But her supposed grief, like so many other things in her life, is just another cover story.

Dexter is the really fascinating character. He is the “makesmith Baron” and doesn’t use his title in his business. He hasn’t disavowed it or anything rash, but he knows it puts his business contacts off, so he’s just Mr. Hardison when it comes to business dealings. Dexter is always genuine, and doesn’t ever pretend. He can’t manage to fake being married, either. His emotions are real, and that’s how the romance begins.

The alternate history is a treat. Britain never lost her colonies, so the “Dominions” are still part of the Empire, but they are a happy part. The other interesting thing is that Napoleon never seems to have arisen, but there was still some kind of French and English war at that period. Also there seems to have been something that wasn’t quite the French Revolution, but wasn’t quite not, either. It provides the opportunity for lots of background skullduggery, including something that reads a lot like a “cold war” between England and France. But then, England and France didn’t really get along until World War I. Of course they’re spying on each other. And spying on the spies.

The steampunk industrial revolution even allows for industrial espionage, which just adds more layers to the plot. The mystery behind the enigma is very nicely convoluted and provides tons of chances for misunderstandings all around. Opportunities that the author makes excellent use of!

I adored the ending. Such a perfectly melodramatic bit of propaganda by both sets of secret agencies. I can’t wait to see where the next book in this series, Scarlet Devices, takes this story.

***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 or borrowed from a public library 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.

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