Month: January 2015

Review: In the Devil’s Nebula by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
in the devils nebula by anna hackettFormat read: ebook provided by the author via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: science fiction romance
Series: Phoenix Adventures #2
Length: 179 pages
Date Released: July 14, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, All Romance

He lost it all.

His career, his woman, his sanity.

Two years ago, on a deadly mission to the lawless Devil’s Nebula, Commander Zayn Phoenix’s life imploded. Now the former Strike Wing pilot fills his days with dangerous adventures alongside his treasure hunter brothers.

But his nights are another story: haunted by nightmares of one unforgivable act.

Until an assassin lures him into a hunt. A hunt for her freedom from the Assassin’s Guild. A hunt for a derringer used in an ancient and infamous assassination—of old Earth president, Abraham Lincoln.

Zayn is compelled to join the perilous adventure with Ria Dante that will take them straight into the heart of the Devil’s Nebula, but not for money, fame or treasure.

He joins because Ria has the face of the woman he left for dead in the Nebula years before.

My Review:

This is a book to read for the sheer fun of it. And if you are a Firefly fan, also for the extra dose of Firefly-like space-western nostalgia. The Serenity cut a much wider swath through SF and SFR imaginations than would be expected for a show that had such a short run, and it’s awesome.

But don’t let my squeeing about Firefly dissuade anyone who hasn’t watched it. This story definitely stands on its own. But if you watched the show, the sense of it in the background warms the heart.

The Phoenix Adventures are space opera of the mercenary treasure hunter type. (If you like Phoenix, try Ruby Lionsdrake’s Mandrake Company for a similar feel)

at stars end by anna hackettThe Phoenix brothers, Dathan, Zayn and Nik, are professional treasure hunters. It seems to be a family business, and we see a bit more of the rest of their family, and the family’s operation, than we did in the first book in this series, the awesome At Star’s End (reviewed here).

But Star’s End was Dathan’s story, and In the Devil’s Nebula is Zayn’s. In the first book it was obvious that Zayn wasn’t happy about something that happened before he rejoined his brothers. Zayn is their pilot, and he used to be a military pilot. Now something is eating him that caused him to leave the service.

Zayn misses flying fast and far. He misses the adrenaline. But something went very, very wrong on his last mission, and he can’t find a way back from it. Until a new rival turns into a new client, and forces him to return to the scene of his biggest regret.

Ria Dante is a member of the Assassin’s Guild, and she wants out. Membership in the Guild is essentially life-long slavery, and Ria has had enough. She doesn’t even like killing people unless it’s necessary, but the Guild raised her from infancy and she’s supposed to owe them her life. Until she dies on a mission somewhere.

Instead, Ria concocts a plan to steal one of the Guild’s most famous artificacts, the gun that killed Old Earth President Abraham Lincoln. (This gun really exists and is part of the museum collection at Ford’s Theatre). Ria’s plan is to offer the gun back to the Guild in return for her freedom.

Of course, she has to steal it first. And for that, she needs the Phoenix Brothers.

The plan is almost over before it starts. Because Ria is the spitting image of the mistake that Zayn can’t get past. Zayn had feelings for his fellow Strike Wing pilot, Viktoria. But when they were captured by the Assassin’s Guild on their last mission, Vik was raped and tortured. By the time Zayn managed to escape his captors, Vik was too broken to move. She asked for a mercy shot, and Zayn gave it to her. Saving her hours if not days of continued torture before her inevitable death.

He’s never gotten over it, not just what he did, but what might have been. Ria is a stark reminder of the woman he cared for and failed.

Zayn can’t help but want to act on the feelings that he had for Vik with her doppelganger. But Ria wants to be loved, or even just wanted, for herself. No one wants to know they are a stand-in for someone else.

The mission to free Ria takes priority, but Zayn finds himself falling, not for the woman he used to know, but the person that Ria is in the here and now – a woman who may look like Vik, but doesn’t act like her.

And just when they think they may finally have a way to finish the mission, they make a discovery that changes everything they thought – about each other, about themselves, and about the Assassin’s Guild that is hunting them to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Escape Rating A: This has been my week for SFR, and I have to say that they have all been marvelously fun reads.

There is an element of serendipity or coincidence that made one of the central puzzles in this book very similar to one in yesterday’s book, Through the Static by Jeanette Grey. It made it easier than it should have been to guess what the big secret was, but the way that Zayn and Ria find out was still an emotionally gripping scene. (Just because I knew definitely doesn’t mean they did).

One of the terrifically fun characters in this story is Lastite Lala, a 15 year old explosives savant. Also more than slightly bonkers. Lala lives on a planet that has a culture much like that of the American West. It is a desert, people mostly ride horses and have farms or ranches, and whoever settled this place decreed “no advanced tech” and managed to enforce the edit. Very Firefly space-western-esque, and Lala is oodles of crazy fun.

Then there’s the romance. This is one of the few cases where the insta-love thing works. In fact, Zayn has to fall out of love with Vik so he can fall in love with Ria, even while he thinks they might be the same person. So he has to convince Ria that she is the woman he sees and is making love to, and not the ghost of the pilot Vik. He screws up fairly often, Ria has no experience with relationships, and they have a lot to figure out as they go along. Only to have it all blow up in their faces at the end.

In the Devil’s Nebula is a tremendously fun SFR romance/caper with a lot of heart. I had so much fun with this one that I bought the rest of the 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.

Guest Post by Jeanette Grey on the Power of What If? + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Book Giveaway> Giveaways> Guest Posts

through the static by jeanette greyMy guest today is one of my favorite authors, which makes this a terrific day for me. And her latest book, and today’s review book, Through the Static, is also a terrific piece of science fiction romance, with just a slice of cyberpunk for spice. If you love SFR as much as I do, Jeanette is also the author of the excellent Unacceptable Risk (reviewed here). And if contemporary romance is more your thing, be sure to check out Jeanette’s contemporary romances, Take What You Want (reviewed here) and Get What You Need, which I need to get a review copy of pronto.

 

The Power of “What if?” according to Jeanette Grey

As the child of a couple of engineers, I was indoctrinated into the world of science fiction young. Star Trek reruns were on constant replay in my house growing up, and I insist to this day—though my parents deny it—that one of my first memories is of being carried into our garage, late at night, after watching Return of the Jedi. (I probably remember actually being carried home from the babysitter’s, where I stayed while my parents went to see Return of the Jedi, but that’s neither here nor there.)

And yet, when science fiction skeptics ask me how I can enjoy that stuff, I like to cite a different childhood favorite of mine as the embodiment of what I love about sci-fi.

220px-Its_A_Wonderful_Life_Movie_PosterNamely, It’s a Wonderful Life.

Bear with me if you will. There may not be any space ships or aliens in this holiday classic, but what aligns it with the larger genre that encompasses sci-fi, known as speculative fiction, is that it begins with a specific kind of premise. It asks, “What if?” What if George Bailey never lived? What would happen?

And in my mind, the most interesting science fiction asks “What if?” questions, too.

Look at The Hunger Games, where Suzanne Collins asks what would happen in a near-future world where people are separated by inequality and ruled by an iron-fisted government that uses fear and the lives of children to control its people.

Look at The Minority Report, which asks what would happen if police could see crimes before they happened, but without the context to be certain about the nature of those crimes. The Matrix, where technology got away from us and enslaved us. The Handmaid’s Tale, in which a crisis of scarcity and fertility leads to the rise of an extremist society that forces women into subservience.

And yes, Star Trek, where civilization has evolved to the point where all beings are seen as equal, and technology has allowed humanity to explore the stars, looking for new life and new civilizations.

All of these stories begin by asking “What if?” And then they create rich worlds in which to explore that question, populated by unique characters.

If you ask me, what’s not to like about that?

In my new book, Through The Static, I ask the question of what would happen if, in some not-so-distant future, we took the technology that is becoming so common in our lives in the form of cell phones and tablets and fitbits, and we integrated it right into our minds? What if we could connect and communicate by thinking?

The answer in the book, unfortunately, is that some people use that power to effectively enslave others. Our hero, Jinx, has had his memory erased and his thoughts tied to those of two other people, together with whom he makes up an elite mercenary unit. But beneath the controls placed on his very thoughts, pieces of his humanity and his former life slip through.

Those fragments of his stolen past are what lead researcher Aurelia to free him from his unit. In the process, though, to combat the damage done to his neural pathways over the years of his service, she has no choice but to link his mind to hers. The result is an intensely powerful mental, emotional and ultimately physical connection that brings them closer than either of them has ever been to another person before. One that leads to them falling not only into bed together, but in love.

Jeanette GreyAbout Jeanette Grey

Jeanette Grey started out with degrees in physics and painting, which she dutifully applied to stunted careers in teaching, technical support, and advertising. When none of that panned out, she started writing. In her spare time, Jeanette enjoys making pottery, playing board games, and spending time with her husband and her pet frog. She lives, loves, and writes in upstate New York.To learn more about Jeanette, visit her website and blog and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Jeanette’s giving away an ebook copy of Through the Static to one lucky winner (Very lucky, this book is a winner!).  To enter, use the Rafflecopter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: Through the Static by Jeanette Grey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
through the static by jeanette greyFormat read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Genre: science fiction romance
Length: 178 pages
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Date Released: January 20, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, All Romance

The only way to save him is to let him into her mind…and her heart.

When cybernetics researcher Aurelia Locke is attacked, she instantly recognizes her assailants as a Three—a mercenary unit made up of a trio of soldiers whose minds have been cybernetically linked, their pasts erased, their wills subsumed.

By the skin of her wits, she escapes to an abandoned house, where she hacks its security system in her desperation to find refuge.

Jinx is already on high alert when his Three notices something isn’t right with their safe house. But he never expected to find a woman wounded and bleeding out in his own bed, or that his visceral reaction to her would begin to awaken his lost past from a years-long haze of violence.

In a mad gamble to escape, Aurelia frees Jinx from his Three by severing his neural connection to them and tying his mind to hers. The power of their link shocks them both, manifesting not only in shared thoughts, but in an intensely passionate physical connection.

But dangerous forces pursue them, intent on reclaiming Jinx and silencing Aurelia’s knowledge. Her only chance of saving him is to risk everything—her research, her heart, and her life.

Warning: Contains manipulation of a person’s memory without his consent and brief episodes of mind control, as well as a smart girl on the run, a high-tech soul-bond, and telepathy-enhanced sex.

My Review:

Through the Static is a story about the things that the unscrupulous will do in order to create supersoldiers. And all the ways that love, affection and even simple human doggedness manage to defeat those who would pervert humanity for their own wealth and (sadistic) pleasure.

Whoever coined the phrase “two’s company, and three’s a crowd” would understand the psychology behind creating these supersoldiers in mind-melded groups of three. Two people form a relationship, or at least consensus. Three people always argue, two against one. In order to settle those arguments, someone else gets control. Or at least that the way the “Threes” work in Through the Static.

That “static” is in the mind of Jinx, one member of a Three whose group is already starting to break down. His two partners, Curse and Charm, have developed a romantic relationship that leaves Jinx in the cold. But members of Threes have their minds wiped and their identities (and free will) taken away when they supposedly volunteered to become part of a Three. Curse and Charm are not supposed to be able to have separate enough personalities to feel anything emotional, just the loyalty to the Three and to their handler that is built into their programming.

Something isn’t right.

Jinx is also experience something that he shouldn’t. In dreams he remembers bits of his past. As if in clouds of static created by his programming, he sees images of a woman he almost knows – and who has eyes just like his.

Aurelia Locke is not a member of a Three. Instead, she is a cybernetics researcher who is being haunted and hunted by multiple Threes, because she and her cohorts have conducted unauthorized research into the way that Threes are made, and the way they can be broken. Or fixed.

On the run from yet another Three kidnapping attempt, wounded and desperate, Aurelia stumbles into an empty cottage a long way off the road. She breaks the security system and collapses, only to find herself under the suspicious eyes of yet another Three. But this is the Three made up of Curse, Charm and Jinx, and their programming is already frayed at the edges. Aurelia is able to make a mental connection with Jinx, and suddenly the situation changes.

With Aurelia in his head instead of Charm and Curse, Jinx is able to experience his own thoughts and feelings without the static. As his humanity returns, he finds himself wanting to protect Aurelia at all costs. He also just plain wants Aurelia, feelings that members of Threes aren’t supposed to have, except of course that his partners clearly do.

Jinx and Aurelia escape, and that’s where things get hairy. There are no coincidences. Aurelia is researching Threes because it is her own discoveries, perverted by a ex-lover, which took something that was supposed to help couples bond and perverted it into the creation of mindless mercenary assassins.

Aurelia wants to protect her research. She wants to save Jinx, to give him the chance at a life he never had, even if it isn’t with her. Jinx wants to be free of everything except Aurelia. But his past reaches out to pull him into the future, and her past kicks the door down and tries to wipe out any chance either of them might have to live.

It all comes down to an internal struggle to see who has more control, Jinx, Aurelia, or the meddling mastermind who won’t let either of them go.

Escape Rating A: The Threes remind me a bit of Robocop or the Terminator, attempts to create supersoldiers by removing any possible capability for human feelings and emotions, either by memory wiping and torture, or by not putting them there in the first place. (In a strange coincidence, my book for tomorrow, In the Devil’s Nebula by Anna Hackett, also explores this theme).

Unlike some of the antecedents for cybernetic supersoldiers, this version does not use implants to create massive armor or even massive muscles (or the equivalent). The process works by removing the original personality and replacing it with something without a conscience, but with an inbuilt requirement to obey they authority of their programmer and absolute loyalty to the members of their Three. Everything else appears to be training.

So, it’s the lack of a conscience that allows the Threes to function as heartless mercenaries, because their hearts have been programmatically removed. The only problem, from the perspective of the person controlling the Threes, is that the program is breaking down in the longest-serving Threes, and they need Aurelia’s research to shore up the gaps.

The problem, from the perspective of Aurelia and her colleagues, as well as from the emerging Threes themselves, is that no one volunteers for this shit. People are kidnapped and reprogrammed against their will into doing things that most of them would find heinous. Also, the programming is breaking down and while they may not remember their original lives, the internal conflict is eating them alive.

Aurelia intends to free Jinx. Jinx just wants to keep Aurelia safe, and also, simply to keep her. There is a certain amount of mutual Stockholm Syndrome going on, but it works in this story. They have come to rely on each other because of the mental connection that Aurelia creates between them. But the more she tries to set Jinx completely free, the more it backfires on both of them. They need each other for a whole lot of reasons that go beyond their original mutual kidnapping.

The bond also enhances their absolutely smoking-hot chemistry. But the love scenes are more than pure sex. Jinx doesn’t remember love or affection, so his experiences are heightened because for him it is the first time for so much in so many ways.

The SF part of Through the Static sets up a gritty world where technology has been abused. The R part of the equation is combustible. And the blending into SFR is explosive.

***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: Romantic Road by Blair McDowell

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
perf5.000x8.000.inddFormat read: ebook provided by the author
Formats available: ebook
Genre: romantic suspense
Length: 290 pages
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Date Released: January 28, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon,  Kobo, All Romance

When Lacy Telchev buries her husband she finds herself in treacherous waters. Igor, much older than Lacy, had secrets. Suddenly Lacy is being chased across Europe by men who believe she can lead them to those secrets. Evading her pursuers with the aid of a chance acquaintance, the handsome and mysterious Max Petersen, Lacy travels across Germany, Austria and Hungary, to a shattering discovery in Budapest.

Along the way, she meets three women from Igor’s past. As Igor’s story unfolds through them, Lacy is less and less certain who her husband really was. Who can Lacy trust? Will she survive to find out?

My Review:

An alternate title for Romantic Road would be a paraphrase of the old song, “To all the girls my husband’s loved before.”

Lacy Telchev finds herself running around Europe, visiting the important women in her husband’s past, in order to retrieve pieces of a secret that he left behind. But while Lacy hides herself under multiple identities, sometimes not even one step ahead of the bad guys who are chasing whatever it is her husband left for her, Lacy is also chasing the past of the man she loved and married, but perhaps never knew.

She thinks she’s doing one last thing for him. It turns out that he is doing one last thing for her – only part of that thing makes her live on the run, often in grave danger, dodging bullets, bombs and kidnappers.

Igor was dead, to begin with.

When Lacy married Igor, he was 50 and she was 22. He had obviously lived a life before he met her, and his confidence and experience was no small part of what attracted her to him. That, and he knew how to sweep her off her feet. But while Igor knew everything about her relatively short life, She knew next-to-nothing about him. And he kept it that way.

After 5 years of marriage, three blissful, two fairly awful, he was dead. A second heart-attack had ended his life. Or so it seemed.

In the events that unravel after Igor’s death, Lacy comes to discover that she never knew the man she married. Igor left her a safe-deposit box filled with cash and multiple identities, along with instructions to visit his former lovers and retrieve material he left with them for safekeeping.

Igor died while writing a book. He had been an operative for the International Criminal Court, among other pieces of a more misspent life than Lacy had imagined. Igor knew which governments were dealing with terrrorists, criminals and organized crime. He had information that could bring down multiple corrupt powers, as well as expose one of the most insidious organized crime syndicates in the world.

Igor scattered the chapters among his old lovers. His last act was to send Lacy to find those chapters, and discover all the other secrets that he kept from her. But there are too many people who are willing to kill to suppress what Igor knew. And now they are all after Lacy, who has no experience living on the run and dodging crooks.

Or even, as it turns out, determining which are the crooks and which are the good guys after all. In Igor’s world, the world that Lacy has been thrust into, everybody lies.

Those lies may cost Lacy her life. If she survives, those lies cast their long shadow over her chance at a new life.

Sonata by blair mcdowellEscape Rating A: Like all of Blair McDowell’s marvelous stories (The Memory of Roses, Delighting in Your Company, Sonata), this romantic suspense tale operates on more than one level. There are the secrets that Igor wanted to protect, and the secrets that he kept from Lacy. He was both letting her help him one last time, and setting her free.

But Igor seems to have been someone who simply steamrollered past obstacles, so he either didn’t predict how much danger he was putting Lacy in, or he did and knew it would be the making of her.

Lacy has to pull herself out of the cocoon she has been living in and risk everything to find Igor’s legacy, and to find herself along the way. She also has to reach for her future while performing a task that lets her bid a firm goodbye to her past.

What she finds about Igor lets her know him better, even as it breaks her heart one last time. But it leaves her open for something new, while Igor’s life and Igor’s secrets are still all around her.

Lacy does not go on her journey alone. She intends to, but she just isn’t trained as a undercover agent. Igor’s friends help her, as does a man she first meets through Igor’s friends, but then discovers is always around when she needs him. Max Peterson attaches himself to Lacy to help her, but Max keeps almost as many secrets from Lacy as Igor did. When she discovers that Max is not the only man who is following her, she stops trusting everyone, with predictable, but disastrous, results.

The Romantic Road is a real place, the Romantische Strasse, in Germany. Lacy travels it both figuratively and literally as she tours Europe to find her husband’s old lovers, and possibly finding a new love of her own.

If you enjoy edge-of-your-seat suspense with a heart-pounding romance wrapped around a story that also makes you think, read Romantic Road or any of Blair McDowell’s marvelous stories.

***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: Ryder; American Treasure by Nick Pengelley + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
ryder american treasure by nick pengelleyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: thriller, action-adventure
Series: Ayesha Ryder #2
Length: 240 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: January 20, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Fast-paced, edgy, and action-packed, the perfect read for anyone who loves the novels of Steve Berry or James Rollins, Ryder: American Treasure marks the return of Ayesha Ryder, a woman digging into history’s most dangerous secrets—and hiding some of her own.

During of the War of 1812, British troops ransacked the White House and made off with valuables that were never returned. Two centuries later, a British curator finds a vital clue to the long-vanished loot. Within hours, the curator is assassinated—and Ayesha Ryder, a Palestinian-born antiquities expert, is expertly framed for his murder.

Who could be behind such a conspiracy? And why do they want Ryder out of the way? To find out, she picks up a trail leading from a mysterious nineteenth-century letter to the upcoming presidential election. As Ryder dodges killers in the shadow of hidden alliances, sexual blackmail, and international power plays, she finds that all roads lead to the Middle East, where a fragile peace agreement threatens to unravel . . . and another mystery begs to be discovered.

Ryder’s rarefied academic career and her violent past are about to collide. And her only hope of survival is to confront a powerful secret agent who has been waiting for one thing: the chance to kill Ayesha Ryder with his own two hands.

My Review:

ryder by nick pengelleyIf Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) and Indiana Jones had a love child, it would be Ayesha Ryder. After her first hair-raising adventure (Ryder, reviewed here) Ayesha is still following T.E. Lawrence’s clues to where he hid the Ark of the Covenant.

And yes, that’s the same Ark that Indy found. In a different continuum. It’s still just as awe-inspiring in this story as it was in the movie, and very nearly as deadly. But unlike the movie, this Ark isn’t spewing death all on its own – it’s the human agents that either want to exploit or suppress it who kill.

The Ark isn’t even their focus. There are, as always, lots of bad people after Ryder. But this time, they are following her as she searches for a treasure she doesn’t even care about. In this slightly alternate history, the two contenders for the American presidency want her to chase down the treasure looted from the White House in 1814 when the British took Washington in the War of 1812.

President James Madison, best known to history as Dolley Madison’s husband, supposedly left a clue in his old desk – a letter that named the traitor in his government. By the time the war ended, Madison’s term was nearly over, the British were gone, and the matter was hushed up. But in Ryder’s 21st century, the candidates both want the clue, in the hope of either hushing it up or publicizing it. One of those candidates is a direct descendant of Madison, who does not want his name blackened by association.

So the treasure that Ayesha is hunting for could easily have been part of the movie National Treasure.

After the events in Ryder, Ayesha’s world has gone on a slightly different course than our own in one very important aspect. The Israelis and the Palestinians have not merely made peace, but have banded together to create a single country in the territories belonging to Israel and the Palestinian authority. That new country has been named “The Holy Land”.

While most of the world is grateful to have that war-torn area finally at peace, there are forces in both America and the Middle East who believe that any peace between these peoples is a travesty that must be rectified at any cost, and that as a principal player in the creation of the new state, Ayesha Ryder must be eliminated, and her work completely discredited, with extreme prejudice.

So Ayesha is hunting the Ark, because she is still following Lawrence’s trail. Agents of chaos are following her, murdering anyone who might have information on the Washington treasure and framing Ayesha for their crimes. Their actions are an attempt both to discredit her work and legacy and to make her vulnerable to capture and possibly murder by unwitting police on the trail of a fugitive terrorist.

In another breakneck, cross-country, overnight chase, Ayesha hunts the Ark, while enemies hunt her for revenge. And because they think the Washington treasure will determine the outcome of the next U.S. election in their favor.

When all hunts find themselves converging on the same location, the resulting explosion of information, as well as the riot of bullets, is cataclysmic.

Escape Rating A-: I enjoyed the thrill of American Treasure every bit as much as the first book in the series. However, I will also confess that I could see a bit of formula emerging, and while it’s a formula I liked a lot, it wasn’t quite as fresh as the first book.

But for anyone who likes their thrillers with a DaVinci Code twist, this series is fantastic so far.

One of the things that I love about this series so far is the way that the author hangs the puzzle on real historical events, even if, or possibly because, he stretches the historical ambiguities out into modern-day treasure hunts.

Also, the central figure in much of the history is T.E. Lawrence, who in real life was every bit as fascinating as the author makes him. Lawrence really was involved in a lot of world-shaking events during his life, and there are still mysteries surrounding his death. Ayesha’s continued adulation and hero-worship is not just interesting, but even a reasonable place to start her adventures. A great deal of early 20th century history really does relate to Lawrence in some way.

One of the more twisty things about this series is that the author has chosen to make Ayesha, a former Palestinian terrorist, the protagonist and heroine. The villains are often the Israelis. This choice sets a lot of assumptions on their heads for a lot of people, including this reader. I find Ayesha to be a sympathetic character, while at the same time finding the portrayal of the Israelis as mostly unrelenting baddies to be uncomfortable. Which is often the point of good fiction.

I will say that Ayesha, while her ability to “take a licking and keep on ticking” may be necessary for the speed of the plot, is in danger of becoming a cardboard cutout of the female action hero. I love the idea of a take-charge woman moving the action forward and being the center of the story, but she’s just a bit too good (and indestructible) to maintain belief if she keeps taking this many hits in continuing overnight treasure hunts. For me to continue to feel for her, she needs to feel something more.

Still, if you enjoy wild thrill rides of stories, Ryder and Ryder: American Treasure, are both winners.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 gift card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice + a copy of RYDER, the first book in the series!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***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 1-18-15

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Sunday Post

It’s mid-January, and the weather in Atlanta is beautiful. So of course we’re planning a trip to someplace cold and possibly snowy. There are perfectly valid reasons why the American Library Association tends to hold its conference at what feels like the wrong time of year (Las Vegas at the end of June for example) and there are even more logical reasons why the conference returns to Chicago on a regular basis, but I ask you, who schedules a conference in late January in Chicago? I didn’t know we were the American Masochists Association, but it always feels that way at Midwinter.

dreaming-of-books-2015At least the days are getting a bit longer again. But there is still plenty of time for reading!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card in the Dreaming of Books Giveaway Hop
$25 Gift Card + a copy of City of Liars and Thieves by Eve Karlin
$25 Gift Card + a copy of Maxwell Street Blues by Marc Krulewitch

 

station eleven by emily st john mandelBlog Recap:

A- Review: After the War is Over by Jennifer Robson
B+ Review: Luminous by Corrina Lawson
B+ Review: Windy City Blues by Marc Krulewitch + Giveaway
A Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Dreaming of Books Giveaway Hop
B Review: City of Liars and Thieves by Eve Karlin + Giveaway
Stacking the Shelves (118)

 

through the static by jeanette greyComing Next Week:

Ryder: American Treasure by Nick Pengelley (blog tour review)
Romantic Road by Blair McDowell (review)
Through the Static by Jeanette Grey (blog tour review)
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey (review)
Phoenix Legacy by Corrina Lawson (review)

Stacking the Shelves (118)

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Stacking the Shelves

Stacking the Shelves

I need to get to the library this week to renew my library card at my new/old library here in Atlanta. Because my old library card back in Seattle got cancelled. The post office change of address let them know that I was no longer a resident. And darn, because they had a good ebook collection. So we’ll see about the new place. I’ve discovered that I use the library a lot more when I actually work in it. I’m not sure whether that’s because I can usually convince someone to buy the books I want, or just the convenience. Picking your stuff up is easy when you’re there everyday!

accidental empress by allison pataki
time thief by anna hackett
mind raider by anna hackett
invasion of the tearling by erika johansen
salvation by anna hackett
owl and the japanese circus by kristi charish
soul stealer by anna hackett
moonlight on butternut lake by mary mcnear
ultimatum by dick wolf
clockwork crown by beth cato
escape velocity by jess anastasi
deathmaker by lindsay buroker
blood charged by lindsay buroker

For Review:
The Accidental Empress by Allison Pataki
The Clockwork Crown (Clockwork Dagger #2) by Beth Cato
Escape Velocity (Valiant Knox #1) by Jess Anastasi
The Invasion of the Tearling (Queen of the Tearling #2) by Erika Johansen
Moonlight on Butternut Lake (Butternut Lake #3) by Mary McNear
Owl and the Japanese Circus (Adventures of Owl #1) by Kristi Charish
The Ultimatum (Jeremy Fisk #3) by Dick Wolf

Purchased from Amazon:
Blood Charged (Dragon Blood #3) by Lindsay Buroker
Deathmaker (Dragon Blood #2) by Lindsay Buroker
Mind Raider (Anomaly #2) by Anna Hackett
Salvation (Anomaly #4) by Anna Hackett
Soul Stealer (Anomaly #3) by Anna Hackett
Time Thief (Anomaly #1) by Anna Hackett

Review: City of Liars and Thieves by Eve Karlin + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
city of liars and thieves by eve karlinFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: historical fiction
Length: 266 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: January 13, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

A crime that rocked a city. A case that stunned a nation. Based on the United States’ first recorded murder trial, Eve Karlin’s spellbinding debut novel re-creates early nineteenth-century New York City, where a love affair ends in a brutal murder and a conspiracy involving Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr erupts in shattering violence.

It is high time to tell the truth. Time for justice. . . . How she was murdered and why she haunts me. It is not only Elma’s story, it’s mine.

On the bustling docks of the Hudson River, Catherine Ring waits with her husband and children for the ship carrying her cousin, Elma Sands. Their Greenwich Street boardinghouse becomes a haven for Elma, who has at last escaped the stifling confines of her small hometown and the shameful circumstances of her birth. But in the summer of 1799, Manhattan remains a teeming cesspool of stagnant swamps and polluted rivers. The city is desperate for clean water as fires wreak devastation and the death toll from yellow fever surges.

Political tensions are rising, too. It’s an election year, and Alexander Hamilton is hungry for power. So is his rival, Aaron Burr, who has announced the formation of the Manhattan Water Company. But their private struggle becomes very public when the body of Elma Sands is found at the bottom of a city well built by Burr’s company.

Resolved to see justice done, Catherine becomes both witness and avenger. She soon finds, however, that the shocking truth behind this trial has nothing to do with guilt or innocence.

My Review:

This novel gets off to a slow start but comes to a slam-bang finish. It has the feel of both history and suspense, because it is both.

Elma Sands, the victim in this case, was a real person. The place where her body was found still exists in a New York City basement. I’m not sure which gave me more chills, the description of her short and tragic life and horrific death, or the author’s afterword describing her visit to the site.

City of Liars and Thieves is a story that proves that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The story, and the case, center around the first publicized murder trial in New York. And it displays all the facets of the “blindness” of justice, or the lack thereof, that we still expect to see in contemporary sensationalized trials.

Elma Sands was a young woman whose body was found in a well in Manhattan, in what will someday become Soho. But in 1800, Manhattan is a fast growing city with a desperate need for fresh water. “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” could easily describe the situation. Surrounded by salt water, there is nowhere near enough fresh water for the people who live there. A situation made even worse by the lack of sanitation practices at the time.

Elma lives with her cousin Catherine Ring in a boardinghouse owned by Ring and her husband Elias. Elma is a young woman who has shown some questionable judgment back in her small home town of Cornwall, NY, and Caty hopes her cousin can get a fresh start in the larger city. Also, she just plain misses her.

Instead, Elma’s faults drop her into an early grave, as a warning to anyone who would get in the way of much bigger plans by much more important people than Elma (or Catherine) ever expected.

Elma got herself caught in the struggle between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton to create a bank outside Hamilton’s control. That struggle manifested itself in the creation of the Manhattan Water Company, a front for the creation of the Manhattan Bank (which still, in a strange way, exists).

The water company was a complete sham. It was a way of roping investors into a scheme that was bound to fail, but folded their money into the bank in such a way that the investors lost their shirts.

Elma made the mistake of telling one of the founders that she would expose him, based on pillow talk with his brother. Instead, she ended up in the bottom of a dry well, and the trial of her supposed murderer ended up as part of Burr and Hamilton’s presidential campaigns.

And the killer, beneficiary of his brother’s money and influence, got off scot-free. Or did he?

Escape Rating B: This story takes a while to set up, because there are so many historical factors in play. Caty and Elma’s relationship, Caty’s husband and their move to Manhattan, and finally, Elma coming to Manhattan already in the relationship that would eventually get her killed.

The stage also has to be set to show the continuing water crisis in Manhattan. We think of New York City as a place of abundance, both of wealth and material goods. Manhattan is the banking center of the city. But in Elma and Caty’s time, Wall Street was still mostly mud. The colonies as a whole had only been free for a quarter-century. This was a time when the U.S. was still more frontier than civilization.

Caty Ring is used as the point of view character. On the one hand, she survived, so she lives to tell the tale (and apparently did in real life). On the other hand, we are restricted to what Caty knows and does, or is reported to her. She is not privy to discussions with Burr and Hamilton, because in 1800 those gatherings were restricted to men. Her husband does not treat her as an equal partner, because he has myriad secrets of his own. In the dark, Caty forms her own conclusions about Elma’s actions and eventual death. Many of those conclusions turn out to be erroneous, both because Caty naively believed the best of people who obviously did not deserve it, and because she drowns in her grief as surely as Elma drowned in that well.

The suspense in this story, and the point where it starts moving at terrific speed, is when the accused murderer is brought to trial. The way that trials were conducted is both different and the same. The jury has to sleep at the courthouse, on the floor, until the trial is over and the verdict is rendered. The judge makes his bias obvious from the beginning of the case, and the amount of perjury condoned is jaw-dropping.

But the verdict in the end is the one that we expect. Money decides the case, and much of the reporting follows the accepted version rather than search for the truth. In the end, Elma’s virtue is on trial much more than her killer’s guilt or innocence.

And that is all too familiar.

p.s. Even if you don’t normally read the author’s afterward in a book, read this one. It’s even more chilling than the story.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 gift card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice + a copy of the book! The giveaway runs until midnight of the last day of the tour, which in this case is January 30th. Enter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***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.

Dreaming of Books Giveaway Hop

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Blog Hops> Dreaming of Books Giveaway Hop> Giveaways

dreaming-of-books-2015

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…no wait, that was last month.

This month (and honestly, every month) I’m dreaming of books. Hopefully you are too, since this is the Dreaming of Books Giveaway Hop hosted by I Am a Reader.

There are some books that we dream of, waiting anxiously for them to appear. And then there are other books that we dream about because they give us a “book hangover” and we can’t let go of them until they have worked their way completely through the psyche. Often with angst.

So let’s talk about books that have stuck in the brain because we’re book hungover. For me, it’s usually something in an ongoing series, usually in a world that really fascinates me, whether I’d want to live there or not. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series always leaves me with a book hangover. So did Jean Johnson’s Theirs Not to Reason Why series. And I’m still speculating about where Ann Leckie is going to go after Ancillary Sword.

What about you? What recent book has left you stranded in the author’s world? Or, what upcoming books are you dreaming of reading? Leave a comment in the rafflecopter for a chance at a $10 Amazon or B&N Gift Card.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And for more chances at more lovely prizes, be sure to check out the other blogs in the hop!

Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
station eleven by emily st john mandelFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: dystopian fiction
Length: 333 pages
Publisher: Knopf
Date Released: September 9, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

My Review:

If you enjoy post-apocalyptic stories that focus more on continuing a life that celebrates what is best in us despite conditions that travel well past hell in the handbasket, Station Eleven is utterly marvelous.

If you prefer the violent aspects of surviving in a world gone mad, try Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling instead.

The apocalyptic event that creates the world of Station Eleven feels all too real, all too plausible. In 1918, the influenza pandemic killed 3-5% of the world population. The event was slightly less than a century ago, and some of the same factors apply in Station Eleven, especially the ones where governments underestimated the infection rate and communicability of the disease. Or simply chose not to communicate the communicability of the disease.

Another frame of reference is the Black Death in the 1300s. 30-60% of the population of Europe was killed, and it took 150 years for the continent to recover. The combination of these two real-life historical examples bear strange fruit in Station Eleven.

More than 90% of the world’s population is wiped out in less than a month by a particularly virulent strain of swine flu. The disease strikes so quickly and in such large numbers that the world healthcare system is overwhelmed instantly. And it also gains a foothold because the country of origin downplays the seriousness of the epidemic. It spreads before anyone has a chance to find a cure, and then everyone who is either not resistant or not isolated dies in days.

Station Eleven is about how the world tries to right itself, and how much we take for granted that can be gone in an instant. With 90% of the world’s population dead, there is no one to maintain all the hallmarks of civilization that we use without a thought. No electricity, no grocery stores, no internet, no police or fire services. No national government because there is no communication infrastructure.

But it isn’t back to the Stone Age, because all the adults remember the world before. Even in a fight for bare survival, people remember how things used to be. As time goes on, the people who remember are the ones who have the most difficult time adjusting, because now they know just how marvelous the world was, and they mourn for it, or want it back.

The story begins with an event that feels like the death of patient zero, even though it isn’t. But Arthur Leander’s death on stage in King Lear occurs just as the first cases are dying in New York. For the group of people who witness his last performance, it becomes their touchstone for the day the universe changed.

Everything from that point forward is reckoned in B.D. (before disaster) or A.D. (after disaster). No other time frame matters.

“Because survival is insufficient” is a quote from the Star Trek Voyager episode Survival Instinct. It is also painted on the canvas of the Traveling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who travel around the Great Lakes performing classic works of music and Shakespeare in the small villages and hamlets that have survived the epidemic.

Kirsten Raimonde is one of the actors in the Traveling Symphony. She was also a child actress on stage when Arthur Leander fell, and she is one of the links between the pre-apocalyptic past and the dystopian present.

She and her traveling company tour a circuit of towns around the Great Lakes that, through trial and deadly error, they have determined to be a safe route. That route is disrupted when they return to St. Deborah by the Water to discover that it has been taken over by a cult leader who symbolically, or realistically, buries anyone who does not go along with his beliefs.

He is also the only other person in the changed world to have read an extremely limited run graphic novel that Arthur Leander gave to Kirsten just before the world ended. While Kirsten tries to resolve that puzzle, she and her friends also must journey to a Museum of life before the fall in order to find missing members of their crew who may be dead, or may just have fled the cult.

The cult, the symphony, and everyone’s memories of the late Arthur Leander travel back and forth through time and across a desolate Midwestern landscape to reach one isolated place that ties them all back together again.

Escape Rating A: Station Eleven is all about the journey. Both the literal journey that Kirsten and company take to find their missing crew, and the journey that humanity is taking from our world of overabundance to their world of scarcity. It is a journey that reveals the preciousness of human connection over all the technological distractions of contemporary life.

Using Arthur Leander’s coincidental death provides a mechanism for viewing the world as it was before, and the world as it is after. We see his life move from purpose to pointlessness to death. We also see the destruction through the eyes of the people who surrounded him in those last moments – his best friend, his child co-star, and the paramedic who tried to save him. Each of them takes a completely different journey to that point 15 years A.D. where they all meet again, along with his ex-wife and her son.

They each survive in different but quite possible ways. All equally traumatic and life changing as the universe changes. There is a world after, but the journey to get their is fraught with pain, and sorrow, and occasional sparks of joy.

Station Eleven has been lauded as literary fiction, but the story it tells is firmly within the post-apocalyptic genre of speculative/science fiction. Because it is set 15 years later, we get to see the story of how people survived, and not just the violence of the immediate collapse. It makes this a hopeful and sometimes lyrical tale, one well worth reading.

Because survival alone IS insufficient. To make us human, we must find ways to do and be more. And that is the story of Station Eleven.

p.s. Get your flu shot. It may not help but it can’t hurt.

***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.