Three recent books

TITLE: Silent in the Grave
AUTHOR: Deanna Raybourn

Silent in the Grave starts with a really intriguing first line: "To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.". Cool, I thought. I like this narrator's black humour.

Edward's death happens in the middle of a dinner party, and since he's been frail since childhood, it's put down to natural causes. But not long after the funeral, his widow, Lady Julia, receives a visit from Nicholas Brisbane. He's a private enquiry agent, he says, and Edward had engaged him to investigate some threatening anonymous notes. Nicholas can't help but suspect that the death wasn't quite as natural as it has been assumed. At first, Julia refuses to even conceive the possibility and doesn't believe him, but then she finds one of the notes herself, and she engages Nicholas herself. But of course, she insists on cooperating in the investigation, whether he wants her to or not.

I've heard many good things about this series, and I really wanted to like the book. I did, but not as much as I would have expected to. It was good enough, and had a lot of elements which were good, such as the atmosphere and some interesting, well-drawn secondary characters, but I didn't really connect with the narrator, her love interest, or the story itself. Maybe it was because I felt the novel suffered from overkill. There were way too many subplots and Julia's family, while very likeable, had a few too many unbelievable quirks. And I'm afraid Nicholas was nowhere near as fascinating and mysterious as Raybourn was obviously setting him up to be. As for the mystery? Well, the murder weapon was surprising and very apt, but the murderer was way too easy to spot, even if I didn't guess the motive.

MY GRADE: I think I'll go with a B-. I'm not feeling particularly interested in reading the next book, but a couple of people have told me the first one was the weakest. Any advice?


TITLE: The Various Flavours of Coffee
AUTHOR: Anthony Capella

Saga-like books covering years and years are not usually my thing, but I'm glad I made an exception for TVFOC. We meet Robert Wallis when he's a lazy, shallow young wannabe poet. His life consists on whoring, sponging off his parents, hanging around in coffeehouses trying to look interesting and dashing off bad epigrams. It's in one such coffeehouse that he meets coffee trader Samuel Pinker, who notices Robert's superior palate for that drink. Pinker wants to develop a guide to all the different kinds of coffee bean available, and he makes a job offer the perpetually cash-strapped Robert cannot refuse. The work on the guide goes well, but Robert falls for Pinker's daughter Emily, and she for him. This results in his being sent to Africa to make his fortune by establishing a plantation of the best coffee in the world.

Quite a lot happens in this book. This is only the start of it, and the story covers quite a bit more, but I think readers will best discover it on their own. What I will mention, though, since most people reading this will be romance readers, is that you shouldn't go into this book expecting a romance. It's nothing like Capella's wonderfully romantic The Food of Love in that sense. Robert starts out as a complete and absolute bastard with women. Actually, not only with women; I despised him for most of the first half of the book. He's a spoiled git with a huge sense of entitlement. Selfish, dishonest, lazy... that's just an understatement. As for his romance with Emily, suffice it to say that he continues to whore constantly even while telling himself that he loves her.

It probably sounds quite awful. I seriously considered giving up on the book after some 100 pages, but the beauty of Capella's writing kept me going, and I'm glad I kept on. Things improve quite a bit once Robert gets to Africa. For starters, he gets his comeuppance with women, and I cheered the person responsible for it. And by the time he comes back to England, Robert has grown and become a much, much better person, and I actually cared about him.

It is a rich, absorbing story. It takes place in the early part of the 20th century, and the setting really comes to live, as well.

MY GRADE: A B.


TITLE: Gabriel's Angel
AUTHOR: Nora Roberts

Reclusive artist Gabriel Bradley is driving back home in a heavy snowstorm when he witnesses an accident. The driver is 8-month pregnant Laura Malone, who's on the run from her late husband's family (they're cold blue-bloods who want to take the baby away from her, of course). Gabriel rescues Laura, and they end up snowbound in his cabin. And that was basically all that had happened up to the point I stopped reading.

Why did I stop? It wasn't that the book was horribly bad, it was just really boring and predictable. It's a 1980s category romance, and it shows. It shows in the clichéd characters and in the dated situations. Laura is hyper-feminine and flawless and Gabriel is broody, and that's pretty much all there was to their characters. They felt quite flat. I just didn't care what was going to happen to them, and I had no motivation to pick up the book when I put it down.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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Angels' Blood, by Nalini Singh

TITLE: Angels' Blood (excerpt)
AUTHOR: Nalini Singh

COPYRIGHT: 2009 (out next Tuesday)
PAGES: 368
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Alternate reality New York
TYPE: Paranormal Romance
SERIES: 1st full novel in the Guild Hunter series (there's an exclusive e-novella called Angels' Pawn which just came out yesterday, which introduces the series).

REASON FOR READING: Nalini Singh is one of my favourite authors. If she's writing it, I'm reading it. And as much as I love the Psy/Changeling series, I was very intrigued by the idea of a different one.

USA Today bestselling author Nalini Singh introduces a world of beauty and bloodlust, where angels hold sway over vampires…

Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux knows she's the best—but she doesn't know if she's good enough for this job. Hired by the dangerously beautiful Archangel Raphael, a being so lethal that no mortal wants his attention, only one thing is clear—failure is not an option...even if the task is impossible.

Because this time, it's not a wayward vamp she has to track. It's an archangel gone bad.

The job will put Elena in the midst of a killing spree like no other…and pull her to the razor's edge of passion. Even if the hunt doesn't destroy her, succumbing to Raphael's seductive touch just may. For when archangels play, mortals break…

Ok, so what is this book? Is it a vampire book, as I've seen many other readers speculate (hope or fear, although fear seems to be running ahead)? Nope, not exactly. This is a world that includes vampires, and although I dont know what the next books will be about, I expect some of them will be the protagonists in upcoming installments. However, the heroine and hero of Angels Blood are a human and an angel.

Elena Deveraux is a vampire hunter. In this alternate world, angels pretty much run things, and one of their powers is to make humans into vampires, giving them immortality (as well as some cool powers of their own). In exchange for the conversion, the newly made vampires commit to serving their sires for a century.

If they decide to renege on their deal and pull a runner, thats where Elena and her fellow hunters come in. Hunters have especially powerful senses that allow them to track vampires. This is dangerous, highly prized work, and hunters have organised themselves into a Guild, which takes care of them and makes arrangements for their jobs.

Elena is one of the best hunters out there, and this (unfortunately, as she sees it) brings her to the attention of the archangel who's in charge of New York. Raphael has a choice job for her, one so hard and terrifyingly dangerous that Elena doubts she will survive it. It's not a mere vampire she has to hunt down this time, but another archangel, one who has gone blood-mad and has embarked on an orgy of slaughter and destruction. And even if she survives the hunt, Elena is sure she won't survive her increasingly intimate relationship with the very, very scary Raphael.

You think that sounds melodramatic and exaggerated? It's not. Raphael truly is scary, even cruel. The thing is, you see, at the beginning of the book, he's not human. His brain doesn't work in the same way as humans' do. Elena just knows that he won't have mercy on anyone who defies him or fails him or represents a danger for his kind, and she's right.

But... his attraction for Elena humanises him. As much as I loved Elena, it was Raphaels character arc that fascinated me the most, basically because he goes so far. I was engrossed by the way he slowly started feeling things that were alien to him and found himself making choices he never would have made, seeing things in a different light. It was a wholly believable, gradual process, and enriched the romance enormously.

And speaking of the romance... (yeah, like I was going to skip that!). As strong and powerful as Raphael is, this is a romance among equals. Elena is more than a match for him, even physically, once she finds a way to bring herself closer to his level. Her refusal to let herself be steamrolled by Raphael seems suicidal sometimes, but then, she's already accepted that she probably won't get out of her mission alive. Plus, she's not feisty with her defiance. No stupid foot-stomping from Elena, not at all. She's just mentally strong, even with her vulnerabilities, and has too much respect for herself to let even an archangel make her into a plaything.

The tone of the story feels very different from that of the Psy/Changeling series. This world is darker and the violence is more graphic, and I think it felt a bit closer to Urban Fantasy. Not quite, though, which is good news for me, because it meant that it had the best of both worlds. There's the strong, kick-ass female protagonist and edgy feel of UF, but theres also the strong romance of, well, Romance, with its HEA ending, as well as a strong hero, whose POV were privy to.

Granted, we do see a lot more of Elena's POV than of Raphaels, but I have the feeling that is necessary, given the huge humanisation his character experiences throughout the book. The glimpses we catch of his thoughts at the beginning really reflect his otherness and inhumanness excellently, but much more than that and he either wouldn't have been that mysterious and unsettling, or he would have become a bit too scary.

As always with Singh, the worldbuilding is complex and coherent, and the book is full of fascinating characters about whom I was dying to know more about. And imagine! Singh does this without any sequel-baiting whatsoever! Every one of those interesting characters had a necessary role in the story, and that was something I appreciated.

The only reason I'm not quite giving this book an A grade is that I felt it was a bit slow to get started. During the first half of the book I wondered a few times when the actual plot would really get going, and it felt like Elena and Raphael were just circling each other for a bit too long. Mind you, it was still a really good read, that first half, but I found it a teeny bit too easy to put the book down.

Oh, there was also a bit of a sense of dissatisfaction on my part with the way we never get to know for certain exactly what happened with Elena's sisters. We get some extremely tantalising hints about an earlier blood-crazed serial killer with whom Elena had an extremely traumatic experience, and we get some details about what that experience was. I kept expecting her to share this with Raphael, so that I could know exactly what happened, too, but at the end of the book, I was still waiting. Hmm, I dont know, maybe this is something well find out later. I'm still not 100% sure if upcoming books in the series will feature new characters, as in the Psy/Changeling series, or whether Singh will go in a more UF direction and keep Elena and Raphael as her mains. Theres certainly plenty more to explore there, so either option would be fine with me!

MY GRADE: A very solid B+.

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Into the Fire, by Suzanne Brockmann

TITLE: Into the Fire
AUTHOR: Suzanne Brockmann

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 608
PUBLISHER: Ballantine

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romantic suspense
SERIES: Yes, and a loooong-running one. This is book 13 in the Troubleshooters series.

REASON FOR READING: Autoread author, although I've learned to wait and then read a few books together, once I'm sure there won't be any emotional cliffhangers in the last one I've got ;-)

Vinh Murphy–ex-Marine and onetime operative for the elite security firm Troubleshooters Incorporated–has been MIA ever since his wife, Angelina, was caught in a crossfire and killed during what should have been a routine bodyguard assignment. Overcome with grief, Murphy blames the neo-Nazi group known as the Freedom Network for her death. Now, years later, Freedom Network leader Tim Ebersole has been murdered–and the FBI suspects Murphy may have pulled the trigger. To prevent further bloodshed, Murphy’s friends at Troubleshooters scramble to find him and convince him to surrender peacefully.

Murphy himself can’t be sure what he did or didn’t do during the years he spent mourning and lost in an alcohol-induced fog. He does know he occasionally sought solace from Hannah Whitfield, a former police officer and the very friend who’d introduced him to his beloved late wife.

But Hannah, still grappling with the deafness that resulted from an injury sustained while on duty, was fighting her own battles. For years Hannah had feelings for Murphy, and one painful night their suffering brought them together in a way neither expected–and both regretted.

Murphy is ready to rejoin the living. As always, he finds himself knocking on Hannah’s door, and as always, his longtime friend welcomes him back into her home. Yet even as Murphy slowly rebuilds his splintered life, he continues to fight his growing feelings for Hannah.

Then he learns of Ebersole’s murder and comes to believe that the Freedom Network has targeted him–and Hannah–to avenge their leader’s death to violence. Now Murphy must face the terrifying prospect of losing another woman he loves.

As the Troubleshooters desperately search for him, Murphy races toward a deadly confrontation with the Freedom Network and ultimate choice: surrender his life in hopes that Hannah will be spared, or risk everything to salvage whatever future they may have together.

MY THOUGHTS: As always, Brockmann manages to surprise. Heh, I really shouldn't have been surprised to be surprised, I suppose.

When I heard that this book starred Vinh Murphy, whom we'd last seen falling to pieces after the violent death of his wife in Hot Target, and his and Angelina's best friend, who'd been in love with him forever, I kind of formed an idea of what the story would be like. Given that all we'd heard from Murphy in the intervening books indicated that he'd been drinking himself to death, because Angelina's death meant that he might as well be dead, I expected something involving him fighting both to stay sober and his feelings for Hannah, thinking he must not betray Angelina. And same for Hannah, she'd feel terribly guilty about being with Vinh, with Angelina dead. Only at the end would they have the epiphany: "Angelina would want us to be happy".

Well, I didn't get that. At all. Not 50 pages into the book, Murphy is sober, having gone through rehab (which did feel a bit sudden), and neither he nor Hannah need the epiphany, because for both, betraying Angelina is just not an issue. They know she'd want them to go for it and not want Murphy to bury himself with her. Of course, Vinh and Hanna are not completely comfortable with their feelings for each other, but hey, we do need some internal conflict to last through the book, don't we?

Now, as happy as I was that things weren't going in the expected, predictable direction, the main romance wasn't the most gripping one ever. I think Hannah was the problem here. I did like what I saw of her. She seemed strong and courageous and smart, and I admired the way she was dealing with her recent deafness. But here's the thing: there just wasn't enough there for me to feel I knew her, not enough to really understand who she was. There seemed to be tonnes and tonnes of backstory between her and Vinh, and so much stuff relating to how she had adapted to her deafness, but we didn't get to see much of that. You know what if felt like? Like Brockmann had actually written that, and then had to edit big chunks out of the beginning of the book. And hey, I suppose it's possible, since the book was pretty long. But anyway, whether that was the case or not, I'm afraid that when a Hannah/Vinh relationship scene started, I enjoyed it well enough, but stilll kind of wished a little bit that we would continue with whatever previous scene I had been reading... usually one about Izzy and Eden.

And that was probably the most surprising thing: how much I absolutely loved the secondary romance. Izzy's asshole quotient had been way too high in previous books (fortunately, it was toned down drastically here), and a guy in his late 20s with an 18 year old? Ick. Usually. Not here, though. Here it felt yummy. I loved Eden, and considering the things she'd had to get over in her life, she felt plenty mature enough (and let's face it, Izzy's quite immature for his age, himself). Their relationship was not quite concluded by the end of the book, and I'm looking forward to see how things will turn out.

Finally, in the relationships area, there's a bit of Sophia and Dave. I'll write more about them when I review Dark of Night (which I'm reading right now), but for now, I'll just say: yay! And knowing who ends up with whom, plenty of clues here of what's going to happen.

The suspense? Interesting and gripping. The hatemongering cult leader Murphy blames for inspiring (pretty much ordering, really) Angelina's murder has been murdered, himself, and Murphy is suspected. Problem is, he hadn't been in rehab yet at the time when the murder happened, so that whole period is a blur for him. For all he knows, he could have done it. So he and Hannah need to track his movements and see if he did it or not. Of course, things turn out to be a lot more complicated soon enough.

MY GRADE: A B+. Solid, and if I'd been more into the main romance, it would have gone into A territory.

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Catching up with Eve Dallas

I was a bit behind with JD Robb's In Death series, but now I'm almost caught up, with only the short story in Suite 606 to go. I think I'll just wait until Promises in Death is out in February, because though I tend to like the In Death short stories, they do feel a bit unsatisfying, compared to the single titles.

Eternity in Death, in the Dead of Night anthology (also includes stories by Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan and Mary Kay McComas, which I didn't read).

The case: A young, spoiled heiress is found having been bled to death. Investigations soon lead Eve to discover that she'd recently become involved in an underworld where people play at being vampires. But when she meets her main suspect, it doesn't feel like he's actually playing at anything.

The character-based stuff: Well, not much of a conflict, here... probably no space for that in such a short story. We know by now that Roarke is a lot more open to the fantastic and supernatural than Eve (see Haunted in Death, for instance), and vampires aren't the exception. His readiness to believe annoys Eve, and her refusal to even consider there might be more things in heaven and earth irks Roarke even more. But not much of a problem, really.

I quite liked the story, especially the dark humour of the face-off between stubborn Eve and the almost stereotypical (but not quite) supposed vampire. I also enjoyed the different characters' reactions to the possibility of vampirism. Peabody, for instance is kind of in the middle of Eve and Roarke's positions. She wants to be rational and cop-like and dismiss all that out of hand, but can't quite convince herself. Very true to character.

Case vs character-based stuff: I'd say in this one the character stuff wins. The case was interesting, but only in how it affected the characters.

MY GRADE: A B.



Creation In Death

The case: The New York of the In Death books is full of serial killers, and this is yet another of them. Only there's a twist: the serial killer known as The Groom had stopped killing years ago, and Eve and Feeney, who'd originally investigated the case, had assumed he was dead. But now dead women are again being killed in his signature, horrifying way.

The character-based stuff: When they had originally investigated the Groom case, Eve was a newbie detective and Feeney was leading. Now this is Eve's case and Feeney is merely assisting from his post as head of the E-section (or whatever it's called). This leads to quite a bit of tension between them when Feeney starts feeling sidelined.

Case vs character-based stuff: I think the police procedural angle worked best here. Maybe there was a bit too much time spent in the mind of the serial killer, but that was compensated by the fact that the hunt for him was good stuff: logical, detailed and satisfying. I'm a bit ambivalent about the ending, though. It had me laughing gleefully, but what Eve did there was so not Eve-like. Even worse, it wasn't treated as un-Eve-like. Still, that was better than the Eve-Feeney conflict, in which they both behaved in ways that I thought were completely unlike themselves. I really didn't get what they were fighting about!

MY GRADE: A B.


Strangers in Death

The case: It was a very embarrassing way to die. Tied to the bed, clearly a victim of an erotic asphyxiation game gone wrong. But for Eve, there's something about businessman Thomas Anders' kinky death that doesn't ring completely true.

The character-based stuff: I'm afraid there was nothing too scintillating here, although I think it's the first time that I've seen them quarrel about money. I would have thought this wouldn't have been an issue by now, that Roarke would have understood Eve better in that sense, that he would have got her reluctance. Although I suppose this made him a bit more human.

Oh, and I did like the developments between Charles and Louise. That was fun!

Case vs character-based stuff: The case was again better. This was one case where Eve was pretty sure about who the killer was from early on, so it was more a howdunnit than a whodunnit. I quite like those as well. Eve knew where her investigative path would lead her, but it was finding what path to follow that was hard, and it was fascinating to watch Eve do it. I'm not always a fan of mysteries where we readers know more than the detectives (which was the case here, as Baxter and Truehart are investigating a seemingly unconnected case which turns out to be very much connected... something very obvious to us, simply because otherwise, why would it even be included in the book?), but it was very nicely done here. The pieces of the puzzle fit perfectly.

MY GRADE: A B+.


Salvation in Death

The case: When a priest falls dead in the middle of a funeral mass, poisoned by the wine in his chalice, Eve is called to investigate. Father Miguel seemed to have been loved by everyone, so why would anyone kill him? However, Eve soon finds clues that point towards him not being who everyone thinks he is, but someone with a much more problematic past.

The character-based stuff: Not much relationship development here, but it was interesting to see Eve struggling to understand the faith of the people she was dealing with. I quite liked what Robb did with this. Eve remains a non-believer, but she knows she needs to get this stuff much better than she does in order to solve the case, so she really does try to understand. Her constant questioning of Roarke, and his very lapsed Catholic-like "why are you asking me??" reaction made me smile.

I also enjoyed seeing Ariel again, a character we'd first met in Creation in Death. It was good to see her doing well, and it was even better that her showing up in the action was wonderfully integrated into the crime-solving bit of the story.

Case vs character-based stuff: Both were good, but there was a lot more meat in the case. Really, really good stuff there. It was a baffling case, and one where the solution made perfect sense.

I especially enjoyed the glimpses of past (future, for us) history. The crime ends up having links to an old string of bombings during New York's troubled past, and it was very interesting to see what had been going on in the barrios back then, how gang activity had gone out of hand.

I also liked the initial ethical question raised by the fake priest's actions. He seemed to be a good person now, conscientious about his duties, doing his best to serve his parishioners. Did this compensate for whatever crimes, however horrible, he had committed in his distant past? Unfortunately, Robb didn't quite go in that direction, as Father Miguel turned out not to be such a swell guy in the present, either. I really shouldn't blame authors for not taking the story where I would have liked it to go, but damn, it would have been such an interesting thing to explore!

MY GRADE: Another B+.

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Two charming reads

This is the word that came to mind when I read these two books: they were utterly charming. But they had other things in common, too, like the strange fact that I just couldn't put them down until they were finished, even though on reflection, they were hardly thrilling!

TITLE: The Uncommon Reader
AUTHOR: Alan Bennett

This slim book imagines what would happen the Queen (Queen Elizabeth, that is; on reread just before posting, it occurs to me that she's not the only Queen out there!) were to become a reader.

The naughty behaviour of one of her corgi leads the Queen to stumble upon a mobile library on the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Her sense of noblesse oblige, in turn, leads her to borrow a book, just out of politeness. The reading bug doesn't take long to strike her, and she's soon playing hooky to stay home in bed with a book and driving her equerries* nuts by asking innocent and bewildered members of the public what they're currently reading.

I think what I liked best about this book was how it humanised the character of the Queen, while not falling into clichéd "she's just like you or me!" territory. The character remains The Queen, someone shaped by experiences very far from those that shaped "you or me" (for instance, she doesn't get Austen, because those minute class differences that form such a larg part of Austen's novels are meaningless to her, dwarfed by the difference between her class and that of even the most elevated of Austen's characters). Only once she becomes a voracious readers, certain traits emerge in her character that I'm sure all the readers of this blog will recognise without much trouble.

Up to a point, that is. As the ending approaches, what emerges is the idea of wanting to write as a natural and necessary continuation of a love of reading. It seems according to the author, after a while, it's just not enough to read, it will necessarily lose its charm. The "necessary" bit was what bothered me somewhat, mainly because it was an instance in which I could detect the author's hand in the story, temporarily suspending my suspension of disbelief. Why? Because I think there is a tendency in many writers to consider readers as wannabe writers as well, and I think that's where this came from.

Still, that was just a small bit of what was otherwise a book that rang true. Even though nothing momentous happens (until the end, that is!), Bennet's voice and the humour wih which he narrates the little things makes them just fascinating.

* Equerry: an officer of the British royal household who attends the sovereign or other member of the royal family (I had to look it up).

MY GRADE: A B+.


TITLE: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
AUTHOR: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This is an epistolary novel, taking place only a few years after the end of the Second World War. Writer Juliet Ashton spent the war writing humourous newspaper columns intended to keep morale up. That work has made her a household name, but she's now ready to try something else. But what? Inspiration seems elusive, until she receives a fortuitous letter from Guernsey.

The writer of the letter, a Dawsey Adams, has purchased a novel that once belonged to Juliet, and wonders if she knows more about the author and his œuvre (ah, those pre-Internet days!). Other details in the letter, however, capture Juliet's attention, and soon she's corresponding not just with Dawsey, but with the entire membership of his Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and learning the moving details of what it was like to live under German occupation during the war.

This is a book of two halves. The first is basically what I've described above: Juliet finding inspiration for her new novel in the recent history of Guernsey and becoming friends with its inhabitants through their correspondence. She also dreams of some day, hopefully soon, visiting her new friends. And in the second half, she does.

It's not that the second part is bad, but the first was just so much better! Learning about what happened during the war (like Juliet, I knew the Channel islands had been occupied, but hadn't really though much about what exactly that would have implied), but also learning about the people of Guernsey. There's quite a few of them, but each and every one of them came alive and became an individual being to me.

I suppose in the second half we continue learning about those things, but there's also Stuff happening, and that changed the whole feel of the book for me. Of course, I can't really complain, as that stuff involves a very nice romance, as well, which I did like very much!

MY GRADE: A B+

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Two authors I love, but mixed results

TITLE: Demon Bound
AUTHOR: Meljean Brook

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I've come to expect that from Brook, and she didn't dissappoint with this story about creepy Alice and sweetie puppy-dog young (for a Guardian) Jake. The plot is straightforward (for the author *g*): right before she was turned, Alice made a bargain with a demon that she's since come to regret. It's unthinkable that she might fulfill it, but if she doesn't, the eternal torture she'll undergo will be just as unthinkable. Nothing to do but desperately search for a loophole that might allow her to escape it completely, a search in which Jake is determined to help her. And as they do, Jake begins to think that creepy Alice isn't so creepy after all (even with the spiders and all that).

What can I say that I haven't said before in my previous reviews of this author's work? The characters are fantastic... complex, real, fascinating and very individual. Brook really delves into what makes them tick, and succeeds in making them come alive. And not just the protagonists, everyone around them (including characters from previous books) is just as well characterised. Also, the worldbuilding is top-notch and feels like it's going somewhere, somewhere I can't wait to explore. How long until Alejandro and Irena´s story?

MY GRADE: An A-.


TITLE: The Laughter of Dead Kings
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Peters

This is a new book in Peters' Vicky Bliss series, after an interval of almost 15 years. As much as I love the original 5 books in the series, I wasn't really anticipating this one. To me, Night Train to Memphis had provided a perfectly good close to the series, and I would much rather had got a new stand-alone Barbara Michaels (or a stand-alone Peters, or a new entry in the Jacqueline Kirby series... now *that* one could use some closure!).

Fortunately, not having had my hopes too high, my dissapointment wasn't that huge. Still, it was a bit sad to read this competent-but-not-special romp. A bit like meeting up with old friends you thought were amazing years back and realising that they're not that interesting. The plot was serviceable, but a bit meh, the characters were nice, but lacked the zing they used to have, and the offbeat-but-oh-so-romantic feel of John and Vicky's relationship was gone completely. Eh, well, I did quite enjoy it.

BTW, something that I thought was really interesting was that Peters made no attempt to set the book right after the last one (which would have been in the mid-90s), even though the action is supposed to take place soon after NTTM. Nope, this is set in the present, complete with blogs (and yay! she clearly understands the difference between a blog and a website!). Weird, but it worked.

MY GRADE: A B, and I'm being quite kind.

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Delicious, by Sherry Thomas

TITLE: Delicious
AUTHOR: Sherry Thomas

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 432
PUBLISHER: Bantam

SETTING: Late 19th c. England
TYPE: Straight romance
SERIES: No

REASON FOR READING: Because I loved Private Arrangements (haven't reviewed it yet, but I hope to do so soon).

Famous in Paris, infamous in London, Verity Durant is as well-known for her mouthwatering cuisine as for her scandalous love life. But that’s the least of the surprises awaiting her new employer when he arrives at the estate of Fairleigh Park following the unexpected death of his brother.

Lawyer Stuart Somerset worked himself up from the slums of Manchester to become one of the rising political stars of England’s Parliament. To him, Verity Durant is just a name and food is just food until her first dish touches his lips. Only one other time has he felt such pure arousal—a dangerous night of passion with a stranger, a young woman who disappeared at dawn. Ten years is a long time to wait for the main course, but when Verity Durant arrives at his table, there’s only one thing that will satisfy Stuart’s appetite for more. But is his hunger for lust, revenge—or that rarest of delicacies, love? For Verity’s past has a secret that could devour them both even as they reach for the most delicious fruit of all…

THE PLOT: The summary above is perfectly good (and if I have to actually write a summary, this will never get posted. I'm still slooowly sliding back into writing reviews, after all.)

MY THOUGHTS: Yep, I know who I'm voting for as fave debut author in this year's All About Romance readers poll. Interesting characters, beautiful writing, cool setting and historical romance that's wholly character-driven? Yum.

The latter can't be understated, btw. I bet it's a lot harder to write stories where the tension comes purely from the characters and their relationships (as opposed to from half-baked suspense plots), and not have them lose steam. But Thomas succeeds completely in this. Why? I think because of the characters. They were truly interesting, and I loved them all. Verity is my favourite kind of heroine: strong, resourceful and a woman who can rescue herself, thank you very much. But at the same time, she's not perfect and has her vulnerabilities. Her back story was truly moving, and made perfect sense in making her the woman she was now. And the same could be said about Stuart, actually. His childhood and his position made it practically impossible for him to deviate in any way from society's expectations and still keep his position. It was even more moving, then, to see the risks he was willing to take for his Cinderella. I always enjoy seeing a staid, conservative hero being brought low :-)

The relationship between them was sensual and exciting. Both "stages" of it were amazing, actually. The original relationship, 10 years earlier, when Stuart fall in love with the mysterious woman he only knows as Cinderella was beautifully told, through flashbacks. This is a device I'm not that much of a fan of, but Thomas uses it to great effect. And then the present day story was even better, with Stuart becoming more involved every day with this cook whose face he's never seen and whose cooking captivates him. I've read some criticism of the fact that he pretty much fell in love with Verity again without even seeing her face, mostly through the food she prepares for him. Well, I had absolutely no problem with this. I bought it, hook, line and sinker. This is something I tend to love, actually. I'm thinking of the movie Like Water for Chocolate, or Anthony Capella's The Food of Love. The idea of expressing feelings through food is something that intrigues me, and this is what was happening in Delicious, the reason why Stuart reacted to Verity's food as he did.

I also liked the complexity of both Stuart and Verity's relationships with Bertie, but especially the former. I assumed at the beginning that Bertie was going to be a villain, but his depiction was quite a bit deeper than that, and I thought it made the book all the better. And same thing about Lizzie, Stuart's fiancée: she could easily have been made into an evil other woman character, but instead, we get a fun, exciting secondary romance starring her.

Oh, and last, but not least, the language was truly delicious (heh). It reminded me of Judith Ivory... especially her two Judy Cuevas books, Dance and Bliss (might have been the setting, as well, even though Delicious was set in another country and a couple of decades earlier), in that it was rich and lush, without ever crossing into purple territory.

And now we come to the slightly painful part. Delicious was an A right until near the end. However, I thought it felt a bit anticlimactic and lost a lot of steam after the big scene where Stuart finally recognises Verity and reacts to this. After that, I felt that the action didn't have nearly as much energy as it had been having previously. I can pretty much pinpoint the scene after which things started going downhill (not a very steep hill, so I still enjoyed the descent, but it was a hill, all the same): when Stuart tries to resist opening the door, thinking it's Verity. This scene was brilliant and wrenching, but after this, I could hear a pfffffff-like deflating sound. And I must say, I really disliked the way things with the Duchess were solved. I didn't buy for a minute her convoluted justifications for her actions, plus, it felt like a bit too much narrative... too much telling and not enough showing. It just didn't go with what the rest of the book was like.

Still, the book was strong enough until that point that this is a B+. With two absolute winners, I can't wait to see what Thomas comes up with next.

MY GRADE: Er, just said it: a B+.

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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale

TITLE: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House
AUTHOR: Kate Summerscale

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 304
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury

SETTING: 1860s England
TYPE: Non Fiction
SERIES: No

REASON FOR READING: I was browsing in the library and it looked interesting.

It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them.

Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects.The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.

A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; and, a country house steeped in secrets.

THE PLOT: This is an account of a true case which reads like the prototype for every country house locked-room mystery novel that came afterwards. It's 1860 and a murder is discovered in the home of respectable, middle class Samuel Kent. After the local police initially make a complete mess of things and it becomes clear that the murder had to have been committed by a resident of the house, notorious Det.Inspector Jack Whicher is called in. The shocking investigation that results is even more shockingly reported in the media, with every detail of the previously sacrosant private life of the members of the family being considered fair game. Summerscale uses police reports, newspaper articles and all kinds of private documents to provide an extremely detailed account of both the case and the ins and outs of the investigation.

I'm probably being a bit too coy in my description above, given that this is apparently a *really* notorious case, but I didn't know anything about it, not even who'd turn out to be the murder victim. This resulted in the book being a very suspenseful read to me, and I think Summerscale was excellent at bulding it up. I see that the synopsis at amazon pretty much gives everything away, on the understanding that it was something everyone would know, anyway, so beware!

MY THOUGHTS: The main flaw I found in the book was that, for all its research and deep level of detail, I didn't find it to be particularly illuminating about motivations. I never really understood the exact reason for the murder, never really felt it in my gut. But not only that; I also found it hard to understand why pretty much every character behaved in whatever way they behaved. Things like, why would the police develop a certain theory and be certain of it? No idea what was in their minds. Why would the governess claim certain things? Don't know.

I do recognise, however, that this might be a bit unfair of me, given that this is a true case and that Summerscale was working basically from documents and newspaper accounts. Could she have conveyed a better instinctive understanding of the characters' motivations? Possibly, but I'm not sure how without speculating even more. What's clear in my mind is that she could never have achieved the same level of understanding that is possible in a fiction book, where authors know exactly what's inside their characters' minds. That I wish this would have been a fiction case, so I could really know all about what happened, is probably a flaw in me as a reader.

All the illumination lacking about particular characters, however, is compensated by just how telling the book is about the cultural climate in which the action takes place. The very wording and tone of the newspaper accounts alone was enough to impress in me just how foreign these people and their attitudes felt to me. I think what I found most baffling and surprising was just how much people felt comfortable in concluding from witnesses physical appearance, especially when it came to female witnesses. Does she have an open face? Her ugliness makes it clear there must be ugliness inside her. Is she crying enough? Í suppose we still do it, more or less unconsciously, but it shocked me to see how explicit they were at the time.

MY GRADE: I'll go with a B. Fascinating stuff.

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Getting back in the saddle

Wow, I never meant to stay away from the blog so long! But well:

· Writing a dissertation
+ Moving to a new city
+ Starting a new job (involving a great deal of travelling)
+ Spending a month in internet hell
___________________________
3 and a half months hiatus

Yep, I wrote my last post on July 24th, over three months ago (I did post a review in early September, but I had that one written in advance, so it doesn't count). I just hope I haven't completely forgotten how to do this!

So onwards. I have a lot of catching up to do, so let's start with lightning reviews of all my September and October reads (not such a tall order, as both were piss-poor reading months):

SEPTEMBER

TITLE: Tribute
AUTHOR: Nora Roberts

Her newest. I feared from the synopsis that it might be a flashback to what I call her Judith Krantz years (glitz, glamour and celebrities), a bit like Genuine Lies or Public Secrets, for instance. But, no, it was very much in line with what she's been writing lately, so that's good news. It's about the granddaughter of a late movie star, who buys her grandmother's old house and intends to renovate it. And while doing that, she discovers her grandmother's suicide might actually have been something else (not to mention falling in love with her next door neighbour).

There was a lot about home renovation, which I enjoyed, even though it was almost as detailed as Linda Howard's survival stuff in Up Close and Dangerous. While the Howard bored me, I felt all the detail was much better integrated here. The romance was lovely as well... I enjoyed the role reversal of the incredibly capable and handy heroine and the sweet, goofy hero who couldn't even hammer a nail without losing a finger :-) And finally, what I loved best: all the family and friend relationships, which were both very real and heart-warming. I especially enjoyed Cilla's relationship with her dad (who had been absent most of her childhood) and with her ex-husband, who had become a really close friend. Oh, and the dog! How can I forget Spock? He was a star.

Very enjoyable, a book to sink into. And now I can't wait for whatever comes next!

MY GRADE: A very strong B+.


TITLE: Moonstruck
AUTHOR: Susan Grant

Very, very nice, and a bit of a change from what I'm used to from Grant. Her previous books that I've read have been good, but a bit light, especially on the romance (not that there's not much romance in her previous books, it's just that the romance there is doesn't feel particularly deep). The romance in this story was amazing, dark and full of angst and reminiscent of the amazing Games of Command, by Linnea Sinclair.

The story's set in a universe where a war between two empires has just finished. One side has been beaten, but the winners seem to have taken lessons from World War I, and rather than humiliate the losers, they decide to take them on as valued (if junior) members of their coalition. The heroine, Brit, is a respected and feared admiral on the winning side, while the hero, Finn, is a former pirate/rogue-cum-captain of his own ship in the losing side. They're ordered to work together on a new ship, which will be a symbol of the new alliance, with Finn as Brit's second-in-command. But it won't be easy for them, as Brit has a very bitter history with Finn's people, and Finn has for years been half in love with the admiral who chased him relentlessly during the war.

It's a very good story, with two damaged characters who complement and heal each other perfectly, and a cool spaceship setting. The world-building and the plot (someone wants to break the new peace) were enjoyable, too.

MY GRADE: A B+. The Warlord's Daughter is definitely on my wish list for next February.


TITLE: Alpha and Omega (in the On The Prowl anthology)
AUTHOR: Patricia Briggs

This one is a short story from the On The Prowl anthology (and the only story I read from it). It starts a werewolf series that has been highly recommended. This was good, introducing to us Anna and Charles. Anna has been abused by her pack since she was turned, because she's supposedly a submissive wolf. But when she discovers something wrong in her pack and reports them to the head of all packs, the head's son, Charles, comes to the rescue. Turns out Anna's not a submissive wolf, but something much more valuable, and Charles wants nothing more than to protect her.

The story was too short to develop much, but it was an intriguing, complex introduction, and I mean to read the first full-length book soon.

MY GRADE: Another B+


TITLE: Dark Light
AUTHOR: Jayne Castle

Can you guess what I'm going to say? Yep, predictable, nothing spectacular, but perfectly solid and enjoyable.

The hero is a Guild boss, the heroine has a problem with Guild men, but is strangely attracted to the hero anyway, there's new, mysterious alien artifacts around, and the heroine's dust bunny steals the show (this one hilariously channels the spirit of Elvis Presley).

Fun.

MY GRADE: I'll go for a B. Solid fun is nothing to sneeze at.


TITLE: Sex, Murder and a Double Latte
AUTHOR: Kyra Davis

Disappointing. It's about a mystery author who finds herself targeted by a killer who's very accurately copying the murder scenes from her books. The police don't believe her, of course, and there's a mysterious new man in her life, who might or might not be the killer. The set-up was good, but I found the heroine incredibly irritating after a while. She just wouldn't shut up, had to keep spouting snarky one-liners, even when it was completely STUPID for her to do so. In the end, blah.

MY GRADE: A C-, I'm sorry to say.

And that's it for September. On to OCTOBER!


TITLE: A Year in the Merde
AUTHOR: Stephen Clarke

This book has an interesting story. The author is an Englishman who worked in France for a few years, and the books are a fictionalised account of the experiences of an Englishman in France (how autobiographical is this? I've no idea). Paul West has been hired to open a chain of English tea rooms, and the book follows him as he adapts to the French way of doing things. Apparently, Clarke self-published it and the two sequels, intending to give them to his friends, but the book became a word-of-mouth phenomenon and he ended up selling the rights to a big publishing house.

I quite liked it. There are some truly hilarious bits, and I liked that the author seems to truly appreciate and enjoy the best things about life in France, while being completely exasperated by others. The only bad thing was that the main character was a bit too sleazy and amoral for my tastes.

MY GRADE: A B-. It really made me laugh, but left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth at points.


TITLE: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
AUTHOR: Malcolm Gladwell

First of the several non-fiction books I read this month (a couple of them I merely started reading and haven't yet finished, which is why they're not in this round-up). Hmm, how to explain what this is about in just a few words? Allow me to let Gladwell himself explain: "The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."

In this book, Gladwell explores just how this happens; what qualities the "message" needs to have to be "sticky" enough to cause an epidemic, what kinds of persons need to be involved, and much more. He does this in a very readable fashion, through fascinating anecdotes. Eye-opening stuff.

MY GRADE: B+.


TITLE: Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness
AUTHOR: Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

I read this one for work, as we've been looking into the application of behavioural economics concepts in some of the areas we´re working on. Like The Tipping Point, Nudge was eye-opening, but it's recommendations were a lot more immediately applicable.

The main idea of the book is that real human beings don't behave as what the authors call "Econs"... the famous homo economicus that all classic economic fields assume. Thaler and Sunstein look into how "choice architects" (i.e. those who design how to present people with choices) can influence people's choices in a way they call "libertarian paternalism". That is, they believe there's ways of designing choices (by deciding what the defaults should be, for instance), which lead to people being better off, as judged by themselves. But the key for them is to do it in without coercion, allowing those who would truly *want* to choose something else to do so without much trouble.

This sounds all a bit abstract, so a quick example of one of the areas they cover. Among many examples, they look at people's pension choices, and note that many people simply do not even MAKE a choice. They just stay with whatever the default option at their job is, because making a choice involves looking at complicated choices they might not really understand. And this is not uneducated, ignorant consumers... they mention how many of their university professor colleagues have done exactly that (and to my shame, so have I, although I would defend myself by saying I still have a couple of months to change, and my decision will be retroactive!). So they propose that this default option should be designed to be what choice architects would consider people would choose themselves, if they were Econs (what they themselves would judge leaves them better off). But the key thing is that it should not be prescriptive: people should be allowed to move from this default easily, if they so want. Hmmm... I don't know if this is clear at all. You really need to read the book to appreciate the argument.

MY GRADE: B+


TITLE: Never Romance a Rake
AUTHOR: Liz Carlyle

A good book, but Carlyle isn't what she used to be. Her books used to be incredibly absorbing, rich and amazing. This story was more than competent, but not particularly compelling. As much as I did enjoy it, I just couldn't get completely into it, submerge myself into the action. What's it about? Dissolute rake Kieran wins a heiress in a card game and they marry, something the heiress, Camille, is perfectly happy to see happen, as she needs to marry in order to get the inheritance. Kieran is determined not to care for Camille, nor to let Camille care for him, as he believes he doesn't deserve happiness (not to mention that he's also sick and convinced he's got only a little time to live). But of course, he can't resist his new wife.

MY GRADE: B


TITLE: Night Pleasures
AUTHOR: Sherrilyn Kenyon

This one I abandoned after some 50 pages, at most. It was disappointing, because I very much liked the first one in the series, Fantasy Lover, and was looking forward to sinking into a long, complex series.

Problem is, I read Fantasy Loverback in 2003. I have a very strong feeling that I would have liked Night Pleasures well enough back then, but I'm a much more demanding reader these days, especially with regards to heroines. Back then, a silly ninny was par for the course. I would have sighed and rolled my eyes at Amanda's shrill stupidity, her priggishness, her foolish determination to ignore anything to do with magic, even though she's perfectly aware that it exists and that there's supernatural danger all around her. I would have sighed and rolled my eyes, but I would have continued reading and probably would have been reasonably content with the book.

But this kind of heroine isn't par for the course anymore, thank heavens, so I have no reason to persevere through gritted teeth. There are much better heroines around, smart women who I actually enjoy reading about. With my reading time suddenly scarce, I'd much rather spend it on them and not on all those Amandas in romance-land.

MY GRADE: DNF.


TITLE: Thyme Out (aka Second Thyme Around in the US)
AUTHOR: Katie Fforde

I was about two-thirds into Thyme Out when I decided I wouldn't finish it. It was basically a hot-button thing.

The heroine, Perdita, is a gardener who grows exotic veg. One of her clients is a posh hotel, whose new chef turns out to be her ex-husband, Lucas. She and Lucas were briefly married almost 10 years before, when Perdita was a very naive 18, until Lucas dumped her for another woman. But now both have grown, and Lucas seems to be interested in another chance.

Here's the thing: I refuse to read a book with a cheating hero. Just plain refuse to. I'm not too technical about it and can buy the more exotic excuses (say, stuff like in JR Ward's Lover Eternal, when Rhage had to sleep with other women to keep his beast under control... I was ok with that). But plain, garden-variety, boyfriend/husband sleeps with another woman just because he feels like it, even though he's in a relationship where fidelity is expected? That will make me close the book in a minute.

And that's exactly what I did here. I had kind of hoped that the whole "left Perdita for another woman" thing had been a misunderstanding, a way to make a clean break, whatever. So I kept reading, especially because I was enjoying Perdita's relationship with her 80-something friend, Kitty. Now that was something fresh and wonderful. But then Lucas clearly admitted coming home smelling of all those other women's perfume and actually had the gall to blame Perdita's passiveness for it. And sorry, that was it for me.

Too bad about the Kitty thing, but this cheating thing wasn't my only problem with the book. Perdita was also getting on my nerves a little bit, especially because she didn't feel 29 at all; she felt like a little old lady. Plus, she had this martyr complex + obnoxious stupid pride that made for a horrid combination.

MY GRADE: DNF, either.

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Ahhhh, feels good to be back!

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Hostage to Pleasure, by Nalini Singh

Drive-by post... I know I'm MIA, but I'm just really, really busy. I'm finishing up my dissertation, plus preparing for a move to Liverpool in less than a week. Fortunately, I had this post already written down from a while back. Hope to be back soon, once things have calmed down a bit, but meanwhile, here you go: one of the best books I've read so far this year!

TITLE: Hostage to Pleasure (excerpt)
AUTHOR: Nalini Singh

COPYRIGHT: 2008 (release date: yesterday!)
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Near future alternate-reality version of the US
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: Book 5 in the Psy/Changeling series. Just like I said in my review of the last entry, I'm not going to go into details about the universe set-up in my review, so if you want to know more, read the first few paragraph of my post about Slave to Sensation, the first book in the series.

REASON FOR READING: Simple: I love this series!

Separated from her son and forced to create a neural implant that will mean the effective enslavement of her psychically gifted race, Ashaya Aleine is the perfect Psy--cool, calm, emotionless...at least on the surface. Inside, she's fighting a desperate battle to save her son and escape the vicious cold of the PsyNet. Yet when escape comes, it leads not to safety, but to the lethal danger of a sniper's embrace.

DarkRiver sniper Dorian Christensen lost his sister to a Psy killer. Though he lacks the changeling ability to shift into animal form, his leopard lives within. And that leopard's rage at the brutal loss is a clawing darkness that hungers for vengeance. Falling for a Psy has never been on Dorian's agenda. But charged with protecting Ashaya and her son, he discovers that passion has a way of changing the rules...

THE PLOT: The protagonists of HTP are two characters we already met in earlier books in the series. Two characters, in fact, who I was fascinated by from the first minute.

Dorian is one of the DarkRiver sentinels, a man no less tough and dangerous because of his inability to shapeshift into the leopard that very definitely is within him. We know by now that changelings don't generally like the Psy very much, but Dorian has more reason than most, as his sister was one of the victims of the Psy serial killer from the first book in the series. So wouldn't you know it? It turns out that his mate is a Psy.

Ashaya Aleine is an M-Psy (M=Medical), seemingly the Council's pet, and who's been working on the very scary Protocol I project we found out about in the previous book. Why scary? Think hive mind, and we find out in this book that it can actually get even scarier than that. It turns out, however, that as we discovered earlier in the series, Ashaya is not there voluntarily. Her son is being held hostage by the Council in order to pressure her into working on this project, and she's even willing to defy them in order to help the changelings.

As the book starts, things have come to a head between Ashaya and the Council. The changelings owe her for her actions in Mine to Possess, so as a favour in return, she has them rescue her son and take him out of the Net. And then she escapes herself, fully knowing her chances of making it are on the slim side.

But she hasn't counted on Dorian's protective side. As much as he tells himself this is just another cold Psy, part of him recognises her as The One, his mate, and that part just won't let her go. And as several spectacularly scary elements about the Council's actions come to light, he's going to have to work overtime to keep her alive.

MY THOUGHTS: Verdict? Loooooooooved this. I've probably said this again, and again and again, but this series just keeps getting better and better.

As I said above, both Dorian and Ashaya were characters I was very much looking forward to knowing more about, and I wasn't disappointed. They were even more interesting than I had hoped for, and my hopes were sky-high.

Ashaya... well, wow! I don't want to give too much away, as one of the best things about this book is discovering just what is going on with her. There are some things that don't add up about her, right from the start. I tried to guess what was going on, but I was far, far from the reality, and yet, the reality made perfect sense.

As for Dorian, he's a hell of a wounded character. You can really feel his pain, both his guilt and hurt about his sister's death and his frustration and sadness at his inability to shift into the leopard that's within him. His feelings for Ashaya are thus satisfyingly complicated. On one hand, he sees his increasing attraction to her, a cold Psy, as a betrayal of her sister. But on the other, he can't help but recognise that this woman is his mate. And by now we know what it's like for changelings to find their mates. It's not something that they can deny, so seeing Dorian battle with his feelings and fear that even though she's broken Silence a long time ago, Ashaya might still be too much of a Psy to really return these feelings was fantastic. Powerful stuff!

Strictly speaking, I think you could probably read this book without having read the previous ones. The romance is strong enough for it and Singh is good at catching you up with what's going on without going into info-dump mode. However, I really wouldn't recommend it. This is one series where there is an overarching story arc that's actually going somewhere, where the world-building is not some ad hoc scramble to get the characters to do what the author wants (à la JR Ward), but is well-planned-out in advance.

A big part of the fun in reading this series is seeing how the relationship between Psy, changelings and humans evolves, following the machinations of the Psy Council, finding out more about the increasingly important role of the seemingly powerless humans in this world, understanding exactly what the NetMind's role in the whole thing is and so on and on and on. It's complex and intrincate, but at the same time, not hard to follow. And best of all, it's brilliantly well-integrated with the romance. The actions of the protagonist couples in each of the books have a decisive effect on their world, and at the same time, are affected by it.

MY GRADE: A, A, A!!!

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Shipwrecks, Piles of Books, Psychics and Beverages

TITLE: Beau Crusoe
AUTHOR: Carla Kelly

It's strange how one quite peripheral element can pretty much ruin an otherwise lovely book. This was what happened with Beau Crusoe.

When it came to the hero and heroine and their relationship, it was wonderful. James Trevenen and Susannah Park are two wounded characters. A former sailor, James spent years in a deserted island after a shipwreck. The circumstances of the shipwreck itself were just horrific, and James is still haunted by them, as well as by the years and years he had to spend alone. Susannah's past is less dramatic, but also painful. She eloped with her father's secretary, which resulted in her being ostracised by the ton. She didn't care when she was married, but now she's a penniless widow and has had to go back to her parents' home, and she's not allowed to forget for even a minute the social ruin her inconsiderate actions brought about.

Susannah and James are brought together when her godfather asks her to accompany James, the winner of a scientific prize (through an essay on crabs written while stuck on his island), while he's in London. The godfather also asks James to do him a couple of favours, small stuff like marrying Susannah and doing something about her bitter sister and her father's aggressive birds, and all the while taking those requests as a joke, James ends up doing just that.

These two are perfect examples of why I love Carla Kelly's characters. They're genuinely good people, brave and caring, two vulnerable, wounded characters healing each other. They're people who have a sense of humour and can laugh about their flaws, and who really do deserve each other. I very much enjoyed their growing closeness.

Or rather, I would have settled down and enjoyed it if it hadn't been for Lady Audley. When James was rescued, Lady Audley was in the same ship as him travelling home, and they pretty much spent the entire trip having vigorous sex (which is described in detail, many, many times). James broke it off with the woman soon thereafter, and she, being a bitter slag, is determined to make him pay for it.

Oh, the book would have been so much better if Kelly had just cut out the Lady Audley character completely! It's not Lady Audley herself that I objected to (in fact, I had a sneaking sympathy for her, especially at the beginning), but the way she was demonised and had so much abuse heaped on her head. Foul, disgusting, a whore, overactive genitals, blah, blah, blah. CK just couldn't stop calling her names and made her a pathetic laughingstock. It just made me uncomfortable, because much of the abuse was motivated by behaviour James had no right to condemn, and by simply being an older woman (and not that much older, at that!) with a sexual appetite. She did do some awful, vengeful stuff nearer the end, but in the first half, I just couldn't see what was so disgusting about her. This element of the book offended me, and the worst thing was that it wasn't an isolated bit I could ignore. Oh, no, Lady Audley is mentioned almost as much as Susannah. *sigh*

MY GRADE: I'm conflicted. My instinct is to give it a C+, but the Susannah / James relationship is much better than that. So I'll be generous and go for a B-.


TITLE: The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
AUTHOR: Nick Hornby

TCPS is a series of columns Hornby wrote for the Believer magazine. They're basically about his reading life: what he read that month, how he liked it, what he bought and why. It was interesting, even if many of the books I've never even heard about. Hornby's voice is great, and he perfectly conveyed his love of reading in his column, and I got a long list of recs. It actually felt a bit like reading a blog, one of those many reading journals I blog-hop around :-)

The only thing I wasn't very convinced about was how he wasn't allowed (by the magazine's rules) to say anything bad about books written by contemporary writers. Hornby says he likes the idea, but then he had trouble with it when he read a book he didn't like. So his solution was to read only books he thought he'd like. Well, duh. Problem is, sometimes you think you'll like a book, actively WANT to like it (because the plot appeals to you, or because the writing is so beautiful), but still dislike it. It happens, and it's ridiculous that he had to resort to hiding the identity of book in question when this happens. Some of those sections when he was talking about "unnamed literary fiction book" were a bit annoying.

I did like the intro, though, especially his emphasis on the importance of people reading what they enjoy. He says, and I completely agree, people should stop treating reading as a chore, and should not choose books based on what they think they ought to read. Reading fiction should be for pleasure!

Oh, BTW, I had to laugh when one month he listed 12 books as bought and then felt the need to explain that "ludicrous" number. Heh, I don't think most people reading this will be too scandalised by that!

MY GRADE: A B+.


TITLE: Sizzle and Burn
AUTHOR: Jayne Ann Krentz

This is the latest contemporary entry in JAK's Arcane Society series, which alternates contemps under this name and historicals under her Amanda Quick pseudonym. I felt about Sizzle and Burn pretty much as I did about the previous JAK in the series, White Lies: tedious suspense (that whole thing about the founder's formula is nowhere near as interesting as the author thinks it is), but decent romance.

The plot? Nothing remarkable. Raine Tallentyre can psychically "hear" voices when she touches objects, a talent which has allowed her to help the police solve many cold cases before. Entering the house of her recently deceased aunt, her talents lead her to discover the latest victim of a local serial killer, fortunately still alive. This episode brings her in contact with Zack Jones, a private investigator, who's in town for a completely different reason. He's part of a PI agency that works for the Arcane Society, and he's after an organisation which is, in turn, after the founder's formula.

Zack has psychic abilities very similar to Raine's (he sees stuff when he touches objects, rather than hear, as Raine does). Raine has been used to hiding her abilities (actually, the last time she told a man about them, it was a guy she fancied, who then immediately broke things off with her), so finding someone like Zack is a novelty.

I quite liked the romance. It was a bit too fast, but there's chemistry between Zack and Raine, and they did feel right together. They fit, and not just because of their talents, though those did add another dimension. However, the relationship was badly overwhelmed by all the other boring stuff going on around them. There were way too many plot threads here, none of them well done.

MY GRADE: A B-. Clearly I'm feeling generous today, but however bad the suspense, JAK's voice just comforts me.


TITLE: A History of the World in Six Glasses
AUTHOR: Tom Standage

As the title suggests, this book tracks the history of the world through six drinks that, in turn, shaped and reflected the periods in which they came to prominence.

It took me a while to get into it, because the first two chapters, on beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt and Wine in Greece and Rome weren't as interesting as I'd hoped for. What's more, the author failed to really convince me of anything more than the fact that beer and wine were important to these people in this particular period. No more than that. Shaped the history of the period, reflected it? I had my doubts.

But then the chapter on spirits in the Colonial period started, and wow, now we were talking! Not only was it fascinating, but here, at last, the author made a real case for what he'd set out to show. His arguments and evidence were neat and elegant: reading the passage where he finally closed the triangle between spirits, sugar and slavery gave me the same pleasurable "a-ha!" feeling I get when reading a particularly perfect mathematical proof. And there were plenty of little details that made me pause and think. Like the link between spirits and the British command of the seas in the 19th century: British sailors had started being given rations of spirits to drink, and their rum was cut with water and had lime and sugar added to it (it was called "grog" a kind of early mojito). And due to this daily dose of Vitamin C, British sailors had less scurvy and were thus much healthier than the sailors of other countries, like France. Neat, huh?

The spirits chapter was my favourite, but the ones that came after it were also great stuff. The last two were very enjoyable, even if they were nothing really new and didn't surprise me much. I think we're all aware of the importance of tea in the history of the British Empire (although, I must correct myself: I would never have guessed that in the early 18th century practically no one in Britain drank tea, as it was very much an exotic, luxury item!), and we've all been spectators to (at least the latter stages of) the links between Coca-Cola and the Rise of America. Coffee in the Age of Reason was a bit more novel to me, especially the huge role of coffeehouses in Britain in terms of the spread of information and in encouraging political, cultural and scientific debate. The author calls them the Internet of the Age of Reason, and he does have a point.

All in all, a book I'd recommend. Just read the first two chapters knowing there's much more interesting material to come.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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My favourite M&B line

Mills & Boon Medical has fast become my favourite M&B line. I tried a couple at first that had a bit of a Presents-ish feel to them, which isn't something I particularly enjoy, but since I've got some author recommendations, I've had much better luck. Marion Lennox, for instance, has become a fave. What I most like here is that the heroines are usually in the medical profession as well, so they tend to be highly competent and in a position of relative equality to the hero. Oh, and the Australian settings! I seem to be liking mostly the Australian ones, for some reason.

TITLE: The Surgeon's Family Miracle
AUTHOR: Marion Lennox

This is a reunion/secret baby story. Lily Cyprano and Ben Blayden met in medical school and fell in love. They always knew their relationship wouldn't last beyond school, though, because Lily was committed to return to practice medicine at her homeland, the island of Kapua, while Ben wanted a life of adventure and travelling. So when Lily discovered she was pregnant right before she was due to return home, she said nothing to Ben, knowing that he'd do the right thing but resent her forever.

Eight years later, Ben is working as a frontline doctor for a Special Forces team and they're called to Kapua, where there's a bloody coup attempt. He and his team arrive to find the rebels holed up with hostages and Lily, the island doctor, frantic about one of them, her son Benjy.

This was quite good. The opening scenes, especially, with the coup attempt and the arrival of the Special Forces team, were fast-paced and exciting, and very good at giving us an idea of who these characters are now. The story did lose a bit of steam afterwards, as Ben and Lily were nice, but not particularly exciting together, but it was nice enough on the whole. I actually liked how the secret baby angle was handled, because as much as Ben now thinks Lily should have told him about her pregnancy, he does admit that his reaction would have been what she expected.

MY GRADE: A B-.

NOTE: I must be softening, but I really like the cover. The kid really seems to be having fun, and so does the guy!


TITLE: The Doctor's Rescue Mission
AUTHOR: Marion Lennox

The setup of this one is very similar to that of The Surgeon's Family Miracle. The protagonists have a history together, but she had to leave him and Australia to become responsible for the health care needs of a small, isolated island. When disaster hits her island some years later, the hero shows up as part of the emergency rescue team, and the relationship recommences.

In this case, the disaster in question is a tsunami, which kills a bunch of people and sweeps away much of the island's infrastructure. This is an April 2005 book, and there's a clearly hastily affixed sticker at the back telling readers that the book was written before the Asian tsunami and that there was a donation made by M&B to the relief fund. Wow, Lennox was amazingly prescient! I suppose it must have been chilling to read it right after it came out.

Again, the opening scenes were excellently done, very exciting and interesting. However, in this case the book continued just as strong. In part, I liked it better because of the heroine, Morag. At the same time that she feels responsible for the island, she does resent having to be there and not having been able to have the life in Australia that she was planning on having.

Also, the conflict between Morag and Grady, what prevented them from just getting back together, was very interesting. As I said, the tsunami has completely destroyed the community's infrastructure. It was already costing the government a ton of many to maintain services to such an isolated area, so there had been some overtures to try and settle people somewhere else. Now, considering the immense expense and difficulty of repairing what's been flattened, the government is even more serious about resettlement, and Grady has been charged with doing a kind of preliminary evaluation of how viable what's left is. Morag, on the other hand, is determined that they WILL rebuild, and not lose the community spirit by resettling elsewhere (not to mention that the Aboriginal settlement on the island won't be abandoned).

Interesting, no? I enjoyed seeing Morag and Grady work around the issue, even while thinking Lennox's implicit arguments were much too simplistic. I got the feeling that we readers were supposed to automatically sympathise more with Morag and her efforts to keep Petrel Island going, but I wasn't so convinced. I kind of felt the argument was mainly: how can you be so heartless to think about the money when there's the life of a community and its spirit to be considered? Well, I think I must have spent too much time working as a government economist, but I found this reasoning really flawed. It's not heartless to think about the money, it's necessary. That money is coming out from somewhere. Financing a huge project such as this one means resources taken away from or not devoted to other uses. The government has limited resources, however rich it might seem to people, and it has to decide how to use them best. What is best for society? Rebuilding Petrel Island or more funds for, I don't know, cancer research? Rebuilding Petrel Island or funds for free childcare? Of course, it can be: rebuilding Petrel Island or more tax cuts to the rich?, but the thing is, that's not obvious. It could be anything, and it has to be considered. And it's not heartless to think that other things might be more valuable than rebuilding one particular community.

Anyway, off from my soapbox, sorry for the rant! All in all, a good book, with a nice romance and issues which made me think.

MY GRADE: B


TITLE: Bride by Accident
AUTHOR: Marion Lennox

Yet another Marion Lennox that starts with a bang. Or rather, a crash, in this case. A school bus crashes right outside an isolated Australian community, and Dr. Devlin O'Halloran rushes to help, only to find that the pregnant woman in another of the cars involved in the accident (and who ends up helping out quite heroically) is also Dr. O'Halloran. Emma O'Halloran is Devlin's brother's widow, on her way to meet her late husband's family, who know nothing about her.

Emma's pregnancy is very advanced, and the accident ensures that she can't get on a plane until the baby is born. So she stays at Devlin's place and in the process, helps both him and his mother come to terms with her husband's death, and the whole community get over the tragic school bus accident.

I really liked BBA. It's got a pretty melancholic tone, which is fitting, as the story is as much about people allowing themselves to grieve and heal as about Devlin and Emma finding love with each other. Lennox does this well, and the story is touching and heartbreaking, without ever becoming maudlin.

MY GRADE: A B.


TITLE: Coming Home to Katoomba
AUTHOR: Lucy Clark

This is the sequel to Crisis At Katoomba Hospital, which I read and enjoyed a few months ago. I'd found the heroine, who's the sister of the hero of the previous book, an interesting character. Stephanie is a very competent doctor with a quirky sense of humour, happy enough to shave her head to support her cancer patients and dye her stubble green.

In CHTK, she falls in love with newcomer Oliver, the new hospital chief (or administrator, I forget the exact title. He's in charge, at any rate). Her house had burned down shortly before he arrived and she was living at a friend's, but there was some mix-up with the property agent, and the house ends up having been rented to Oliver as well. They decide to share, sparks fly, even when Oliver's young daughter comes visit, etc., etc.

This was a nice book until the halfway point, when Steph goes a bit psycho. So there's chemistry between her and Oliver, they like each other, they feel a connection. They've done nothing more than share a few kisses and feel something real might develop, when Stephanie suddenly decides she loves Oliver. Ok, a bit sudden, but ok. But then, when he says he thinks they should date, get to know each other better, etc, she just goes batshit crazy and starts accusing him of using her and telling him he needs to make a commitment and blah, blah, blah. Mind you, it's been only a couple of weeks since they've even met! I thought Oliver was just proceeding the normal way, and that it was Steph who was completely out of line. But no, everyone else seems to find her behaviour perfectly justified, while I was going WTF?? At one point Oliver wonders "had he really behaved so badly?" He answers "yes" to himself, but I'd say "Definitely not".

I also disliked the demonisation of Oliver's ex wife. She's a completely cartoonish figure here, and it irritated me.

MY GRADE: A C-.


TITLE: Pregnant on Arrival
AUTHOR: Fiona Lowe

The title of this one is more accurate than most: Dr. Bronte Hawkins discovers her pregnancy on her arrival to a small outback town, where she's joining the area's Flying Doctors team. Huon Morrison was looking forward to getting a new partner who could share his backbreaking workload, and is now quite angry that the new partner has turned out to be pregnant and obviously will be going back as soon as she can. But Bronte is determined to stay, and soon he's helping her settle in Muttawindi and feeling more and more of an attraction to her.

I loved the portrayal of Bronte and Huon's day-to-day work, providing medical care for the people living in a wide area of the Australian Outback, whether over the phone or radio or flying all over the place on emergency calls. There's a variety of interesting cases, and Lowe gives us a fascinating glimpse of what an outback doctor's life might be like.

The romance? Nice. Nothing to phone home about, but on the other hand, nothing that bothered me, and the setting and the other stuff that was going on around them was strong enough to earn this a recommend.

MY GRADE: A B-.

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