December 2015 wish list

Not a huge number of books for December, but some really good ones.

Books I'm definitely planning to get


Once Upon a Marquess, by Courtney Milan (Dec 1 8)

First in a new series by one of my favourite authors. It's been about to come out for a while now, but the (I hope) final timing works quite well for me, as I've got a long flight on the 10th. What is it about? I don't care; I'm buying it!





Secret Sisters, by Jayne Ann Krentz (Dec 8)

JAK is the author I just can't quit. Her latest books have been a bit better (no more Arcane Society, yay!), but still have the preposterously over-complicated suspense subplots. I'm hoping that will get better as well, so I'm probably going to read this one.





Her Every Wish by Courtney Milan (Dec 15)

Short story in the new series. It sounds like fun.





Dukes Prefer Blondes, by Loretta Chase (Dec 29)

I haven't read all the books in the Dressmakers' series, as I found them a bit too improbable. This is part of that series, but it seems to move a little bit away from that original premise, so I'll give it a shot.




Books that interest me and I'll keep an eye on



Clockwork Samurai by Jeannie Lin (Dec 1)

Lin's writing hasn't clicked with me in the past, but her books sound so amazing that I will try her again. This one seems to be steampunk set in China and Japan in the 19th century. How could I resist?





Shelter Me by Shelley Ann Clark (Dec 29)

This one features a heroine who's a recovering addict and a hero who knew her before, when she was, as the blurb puts it, "a hot mess". It sounds good.

Read more...

Two annoying DNFs, space and a mysterious shipwreck

TITLE: Illuminae
AUTHOR: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

It's some 500 years in the future, and for a couple of centuries, a corporation has been secretly mining for a rare metal in a distant planet. Many thousands of people live in the settlement that has grown around these operations. And then one day ships from a rival corporation arrive, but instead of simply reporting the illegal settlement to the interplanetary authorities, they destroy it. A few thousand survivors manage to evacuate and face a long, cramped trip to safety, all the while being pursued by the evil corporation. They clearly don't want witnesses. And then things start to go wrong.

This sounded great. It's narrated through a collection of documents, from transcripts of interviews to chat logs and official and unofficial communications, which is a device which, if well done, works wonderfully for me. It didn't here. The problem was the YA-ness of it all, I'm afraid. The action focuses on two teens amongs the evacuees, Kady and Ezra, who used to be together but broke up right before the attacks. This focus means that a lot of the book is written in this really annoying snarky tone, one which feels really out of place given what's going on. Actually, it's not just Kady and Ezra. The whole thing is like that, and it just didn't feel believable. The worst were these little notes left by the supposed editors of the thing, the people who collected the material (for purposes that are not 100% clear in the sections I read). The little snarky jokes there were particularly out of place. Between that and (possibly because of it) the fact that the characters really weren't coming alive, I gave up at about 25%.

MY GRADE: A DNF.



TITLE: Twelfth Sun
AUTHOR: Mae Clair

Regan Cassidy has agreed to help out her uncle by attending an auction and bidding for a volume he's been after for a while: a journal written by someone who was on a ship that was mysteriously lost at sea. She's to meet up with a professional contact of her uncle's, a marine archaeologist who's going to authenticate the journal. And it was their first meeting that put me off. Basically, Reagan is exactly the kind of heroine that really annoys me. The book opens with her mistakenly going into the wrong hotel room. She manages to come in right at the moment when the occupant (no points if you guess that it's the very marine archeologist she's meant to meet up with) is coming out of the bathroom naked. She flips. Fair enough. But then once they sort out the misunderstanding, she acts like a twit. She's all mortified and becomes really weirdly aggressive and formal with him, even in their further interactions when it becomes clear who Eli is. She treats him as if he's done something horribly wrong and offensive to her, when he did nothing of the kind (other than make some mild jokes when she was invading his room and accusing him of being a sexual predator). Seriously, woman, get over yourself.

The problem with this is that although the storyline was potentially intriguing (I loved the idea of the shipwreck and the mysterious log) and the hero seemed fine, Regan continued to be a complete ninny. I couldn't face spending more time with her, so I bailed.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

Read more...

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

TITLE: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
AUTHOR: David Mitchell

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 512
PUBLISHER: Random House

SETTING: 1799-1800 Japan
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None, although some characters recur in other books

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, and costly courtesans comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken—the consequences of which will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings.

I've only read 3 books by David Mitchell (including this one), but those have been enough to earn him a space amongst my favourite authors. There's something about his voice and his characters that just does it for me. Weird, because one of the things he specialises in is what I guess you could call literary ventriloquism... both Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks were made up of sections that read each like a different genre or type of novel. No matter, all those voices had that mesmerising quality in common.

The structure of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is slightly more straighforward, at least in comparison with those two. The story takes place in a single time period, 1799-1800 and in a single geographical location, the area round Nagasaki. We start out with the arrival of Jacob de Zoet, a Dutch clerk about to take his post in the Dutch trading post in the island of Dejima, in Nagasaki Bay (quick historical note: at the time the Dutch were the only Europeans allowed to trade with Japan, and they were contained and limited to this area to make sure they didn't engage in any missionary activities). Jacob is an honest guy, which doesn't earn him many friends amongst his fellow employees of the Dutch East India Company. Most of the men in the island (including Jacob's superiors) are cheerfully and openly cheating the company, and they resent Jacob's interference.

But if you think this is a novel about a European's adventures in an exotic land, with the natives providing colourful background, that's not at all what Mitchell is doing. Because Mitchell doesn't completely move away from his preferred structure of self-contained sections with different main characters and in later sections the action moves squarely to Japanese characters and their own concerns. These are characters with some links to Jacob in the first section, but those links are relatively inconsequential in their stories, and Jacob is merely a secondary character in their lives.

There's Aibagawa Orito, a young woman whose disfiguring facial scarring has allowed her to move away from the usual life of a woman of her station. Instead of going straight from her father to a husband, she's been allowed to study midwifery with the doctor at the Dutch Trading Post, Dr. Marinus (readers of The Bone Clocks will certainly know him!). On her father's death, however, she comes to the attention of Lord Abbot Enomoto, which places her in great danger. There's also Ogawa Uzaemon, a young Dejima translator who's got a past with Orito, and who must choose whether he'll endanger a comfortable life to do what is right. Even if they aren't named in the title, they're just as much the main characters as Jacob.

I really wasn't quite sure where the story was going when I started, and it never got predictable. I kept being surprised by where Mitchell took things. It's a book that succeeds both as a fun adventure story (in fact, it gets quite schlocky at one point!) and as a historical novel, giving us a really vivid picture of the time and place. I highly recommend it.

MY GRADE: An A-.

Read more...

Brother Grimm, by Craig Russell

TITLE: Brother Grimm
AUTHOR: Craig Russell

COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 448
PUBLISHER: Arrow Books

SETTING: Contemporary Hamburg, Germany
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: 2nd in the Jan Fabel series

A girl's body lies, posed, on the pale sand of a Hamburg beach, a message concealed in her hand. 'I have been underground, and now it is time for me to return home...'

Jan Fabel, of the Hamburg murder squad, struggles to interpret the twisted imagery of a dark and brutal mind. Four days later, a man and a woman are found deep in woodland, their throats slashed deep and wide, the names 'Hansel' and 'Gretel', in the same, tiny, obsessively neat writing, rolled tight and pressed into their hands.

As it becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected almost two hundred years ago by the Brothers Grimm, the hunt is on for a serial killer who is exploring our darkest, most fundamental fears. A predator who kills and then disappears into the shadows.

A monster we all learned to fear in childhood.

When the murdered body of a young girl is found on a beach near-Hamburg, a paper stating her name is Paula Ehlers clutched in her hand, Kriminalhauptkommissar Jan Fabel and his team initially take this at face value. Paula has been missing for 3 years, and the dead girl looks about what you'd expect Paula to look 3 years later. But then it turns out the body isn't that of Paula. A few days later, two more people are found dead, with similar pieces of paper in their hands. They, the papers state, are "Hansel" and "Gretel". And it becomes clear to Fabel and his team that they're facing a serial killer with some fascination for the stories of the Brothers Grimm.

My reaction to this one was mixed. On the plus side, I really enjoyed the characters and wanted to see more of them and their relationships. The people in Fabel's team are interesting and all very different, and I liked the way Fabel treated them. He's a good boss, interested in getting the work done but also in developing and nurturing the people in his team, seeing them as capable professionals, but not losing sight of them as human beings. I was also very interested in Fabel's relationship with Suzanna, a forensic psychologist (I think that's the right term; she's on that field, anyway!) It's clear that all these relationships started in book 1 in the series, Blood Eagle, but while I did feel that I was missing something, it was still satisfying and Russell gave me enough to catch up.

I also liked the setting. I'm not quite sure what Russell's background is and if he's lived in Hamburg, but the setting feels vivid. There are a few instances of a bit toomuch exposition about the history of a particular district and stuff like that, but these instances were minor and didn't really bother me much. I know some readers on goodreads were uncomfortable with the amount of German Russell used (e.g. all the titles and names of the places, even the simply descriptive ones, are given in German), but I didn't mind. It was fairly easy to deduce what was meant, and I felt it added to the colour.

The actual case, unfortunately, ended up on the negative side. It just wasn't as good as it could have been. It started out really intriguing, with the fairy tale connections, but it soon turned into a bit of a bloodbath, with the connections crossing the line into preposterously overcomplicated and non-sensical. And then the actual ending was pretty bad. Yes, I didn't guess the culprit, but purely because I don't think I really could have. I won't say more because I don't want to spoil it, but I didn't feel Russell played quite fair. Also, it was all pretty anticlimactic. No tension or risk, basically. The cops do a bit of quite good deduction and identify the culprit, but he's done with his killings, anyway, and the arrest is super smooth and he confesses all. In fact, he confesses all to an excruciating level of detail. Almost the last hour in the audiobook could have been dispensed with, as it was all either covering stuff we already knew or could deduce, or boring stuff about the killer's sick mind that really had no point.

On the whole, I'm glad I read it, though, and I mostly enjoyed it, but it was disappointing that it could have been so much better!

MY GRADE: A B-.

Read more...

A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold

TITLE: A Civil Campaign
AUTHOR: Lois McMaster Bujold

COPYRIGHT: 1999
PAGES: 544
PUBLISHER: Baen

SETTING: Barrayar
TYPE: Science Fiction
SERIES: 8th full-length title in the Vorkosigan series

The recently widowed Ekaterin Vorsoisson returns to Barrayar, following the events described in KOMARR, and finds herself under siege from several suitors, including Miles Vorkosigan. Miles' initial attempts at courtship result in colossal disasters, affecting as well Miles' brother Mark, who is forbidden from courting his own ladylove by the girl's outraged parents. Some nasty political maneuverings by ambitious Vor aristocrats create new trials for Miles while he wages his campaign for Ekaterin's heart. Intrigue, wit and high hilarity make this Hugo and Nebula finalist a must for readers of science fiction and romance alike.

I took a little break from the Vorkosigan series after reading this one (it's intense!), so I'm a bit late with this review. But now I've just started Diplomatic Immunity, so I'd best catch up!

A Civil Campaign takes place right after the events in Komarr, and it's basically a romance. There are a few other threads here, including Mark and Kareen's romance and their latest business venture, the preparations for Gregor's upcoming wedding, as well as plenty of political intrigue, including a couple of tricky succession questions involving friends of Miles' that are going before the Council of Counts. The focus, though, is on Miles and his wooing of Ekaterin.

Now, I must say Komarr lulled me into a false sense of security. Everything seemed to be going fine. Miles had made an impression, Ekaterin, in spite of telling herself she had been put off marriage for good after her experiences, had admitted to herself she was really attracted to Miles. Surely it would all be plain sailing from there? But oh, how things fell apart!

Basically, Miles is constitutionally unable to take things easy. He approaches wooing Ekaterin as a campaign he must win. He applies all his guiles and his well-earned experience in manipulation. But the problem with that is, a campaign suggests a war, and if you're waging a war, then someone must be the enemy, and that's exactly how it feels from Ekaterin's end.

I'm not going to spoil things, but there's a scene (the dinner party scene, for those of you who've read the book) which was probably the most painful I've ever read, in a truly excellent, wonderful way. It was the perfect collapse of Miles' elaborate strategies. What was so wonderful about it was that I was really impressed by how well Bujold inspired mixed, contradictory reactions in me. On one hand, I wanted Miles to succeed in his quest to get a HEA with Ekaterin. So I felt anger, real, almost incandescent anger at the careless sabotage of Miles' arrangements. He's such a vulnerable character inside his maniacal, powerful outside. But at the same time, I'd got more and more uncomfortable with the calculating way he was going about wooing Ekaterin. That bit I think might have hit on a personal soft spot. I have had a couple of experiences with guys who I thought were friends suddenly revealing that they had never actually been interested in friendship in the first place, that the friendship bit was only an excuse to get close. That feels like a betrayal, and what Miles was doing with Ekaterin felt like just that. So I also wanted him to get his just desserts for how he was treating Ekaterin as a prize to be won, and I felt that scene delivered satisfaction in spades.

And so did the rest of the romance, once we were over that. I loved that Miles does, in the end, get it. He understands what he did wrong and he makes up for it, not because he needs to do that to get Ekaterin, but because he's truly sorry he's hurt her and wants her to be happy. And I just loved the big gesture at the end. I don't usually, but this was a bit of a reversal of the usual scenario, and it worked for this couple. It felt triumphant.

On the whole, this book reminded me very much of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane's romance in Dorothy L. Sayers' books, which, considering the dedication of A Civil Campaign, seems like a conscious homage. I saw the conflict as being about how an individual couple can build a truly equal relationship, one in which the woman is completely free, in the midst of a sexist, patriarchal society. A society, too, where both have been brought up, so one which they've absorbed in their upbringing and subconscious attitudes, even as they tell themselves (well, in this case, more like "he tells himself") they're modern and galactic. Bujold made me believe they'd succeeded in building something beyond those constraints.

It's a book that is as funny as it is intense (Mark's latest business venture, which includes an absent-minded scientist and disgusting bugs that vomit a yummy edible butter, adds a much-needed element of farce). It was wonderful. I can certainly see why it's so beloved by everyone who's read this series.

There was only one element which I felt was a bit dated, for all that this book is set in the far future, and that is the transphobia in a couple of sympathetic characters' reactions. One of the subplots involves a character who has had a sex-change operation, and there were some reactions which had more than a tinge of revulsion. It's something that I'm pretty sure Bujold, who shows a remarkably progressive attitude in other areas of the narrative, would write differently today, as it feels like in the last 15 years the issue of trans people has become more visible and understood.

MY GRADE: An A+.

Read more...

The Monogram Murders, by Sophie Hannah

TITLE: The Monogram Murders
AUTHOR: Sophie Hannah

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: William Morrow

SETTING: 1920s England
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: Supposedly an Hercule Poirot book

"I'm a dead woman, or I shall be soon..."

Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. Though terrified, she begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done. Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a London Hotel have been murdered, and a monogrammed cufflink has been placed in each one's mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim.

The Monogram Murders is a new Hercule Poirot book. Almost 40 years after Agatha Christie's death, her estate has followed the example of so many other literary estates and commissioned a new book featuring her famous detective. The author chosen is Sophie Hannah, who's written a number of very successful psychological mysteries. I read one a couple of years ago and enjoyed it ok. I therefore entered this with a pretty open mind.

The book is set in the 1920s. Poirot is giving his little grey cells a bit of a holiday and has moved out of his house into a nearby guesthouse. He's also avoiding his usual haunts, and it's at a very good coffeehouse he has recently discovered that he meets a terrified woman called Jennie. He manages to coax out of her that she's afraid she will be murdered, but she asks him not to find the killer and let justice be done. With that, she runs out.

When Poirot comes home that evening, he hears about a strange case from one of his fellow residents at the guesthouse, Mr. Catchpool, from Scotland Yard. Three people have been found dead, each in a different room in a nearby hotel, each poisoned and posed in an almost ritualistic position, each with a monogrammed cufflink in his or her mouth. Poirot immediately remembers one of the things Jennie said: "Let no one open their mouths", and is convinced her fear and this crime are related. His little grey cells are no longer on holiday!

There are two ways to judge this book: as an Hercule Poirot mystery or as a mystery with a lead character whose name happens to be Hercule Poirot. It fails utterly as either. It was probably the worst book I've read in several years, and this includes Fifty Shades of Grey. It's that bad.

Hannah shows absolutely no understanding of what made Christie's books so enjoyable. The only thing that rang true was the one thing that tends to bother me in Christie's books and I would happily have lost: the offensively stereotypical Italian character. The rest did not feel right at all.

The plot is preposterous and overly complicated and makes absolutely no psychological sense. No one in this book behaves as a real human being. And Poirot is absolutely not Poirot. The real Poirot operates on deduction and a fine understanding of human psychology. This guy makes what I can only describe as supernatural guesses and Hannah's justifications are laughable. This Poirot is also a terrible judge of character. Right at the start of the book he describes Catchpool as a young policeman who will go far. He won't. Unlike the policemen the real Poirot often works alongside, the problem with Catchpool isn't that he's solid, but a bit plodding and unimaginative. He's just plain stupid.

Really, I can't even begin to describe how stupid Catchpool is, and since he's the main POV character, that is a huge problem. He's terrible at his job. He misses everything. There's a thing right at the start where he and Poirot are discussing how the murders might have been done. We're talking 3 people poisoned, each in different hotel rooms, during a window of 45 minutes. As far as Catchpool is concerned, all he needs to take from that is that the murderer went in each of the rooms and killed them. Done. No consideration of how the murderer might have gained access, how he might have got each of them to take the poison, why he laid them out in a specific position. The man is thick. And he's negligent, as well. He gets upset at seeing the dead bodies (a homicide detective!), so he runs away and leaves the bodies, neglecting to even make arrangements for the morgue to collect them. Seriously? And when we find out why he was so upset it's the silliest of things. And this is only the beginning of the book. It gets worse, much worse.

I hated every minute I was reading this, and if I hadn't been reading this for book club, I would have tossed it. The Christie estate should be ashamed of themselves for approving this rubbish.

MY GRADE: You know when I just said that I only finished this because it was for book club? Well, I lied. I also finished it because I don't give grades to DNFs, and it gives me great satisfaction to give this putrid pile of poo an F.

Read more...

A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara

TITLE: A Little Life
AUTHOR: Hanya Yanagihara

COPYRIGHT: 2015
PAGES: 736
PUBLISHER: Doubleday

SETTING: Contemporary(ish) New York
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome-but that will define his life forever.

This was a book I read purely because it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I'd heard quite a lot about it, even before it was longlisted, and it really didn't sound like something I'd want to read. Over-the-top trauma isn't usually my thing, much less 750 pages of it. But then it was shortlisted, so I forced myself to pick it up. I expected to struggle with it and have to push myself to continue reading. But I didn't! I was completely absorbed right from the start and practically raced to the end. Don't get me wrong; it was pretty harrowing and often difficult, but it was much more of a "good read" than I expected.

The blurb and many reviews make this sound as if it's the story of four friends. There are four friends and when the book starts out it does feel like it's going to be about them and their friendship, but you soon see it's not. This is the story of one of them, Jude. The start is only a way to tell us a bit about the people who revolve round Jude, tell us their stories and show us the big space Jude takes up there. But Jude is the centre. Jude endured horrific abuse as a child, and as an adult, the consequences (both physical and psychological) have a huge impact on his entire life. What we have here is basically a character study. We get to know and understand Jude and really get under his skin. It's not really a story of triumph over adversity, even though Jude has overcome a lot to become very succesful in his career and amassed a group of people around him who love him. The consequences of his abuse are too big for that. This is really a tragedy. For me, it was still worth reading and I'm glad I did, but it really won't work for everyone.

And even though it did work for me, I did have some issues with it. Mainly, I thought it would have worked even better if it hadn't been so extreme. I've listened to a couple of interviews with the author and she makes no bones about the fact that she was going for just that. I just didn't feel that was well-judged. Not because it made the book too hard too read or too harrowing, but because I felt that it detracted from the impact it could have had.

See, to be upset about something, I need to believe in it. I didn't quite believe in Jude's past. His early life is is 100% full of 100% evil monsters. It was not so much that I doubted there would be people quite so evil; we all know there are monsters in this world. It was more the logistics of Jude encountering quite so many of them (pre-internet, too, though it's true that time in this book doesn't really pass), with no one even half-decent in between, and the contrast between that and how in the life he builds in New York he is surrounded by so many people who love him unconditionally and are there for him uncompromisingly, willing (actually, eager!) to dedicate their entire lives to him. The contrast between those worlds felt too strong. So because I didn't fully buy the details of the abuse, it felt less traumatic to read. When Yanagihara was describing Jude falling into the clutches of yet another monstrous abuser, I wasn't that affected, because it didn't feel like something that was happening to a real person, it felt like something an author was coolly doing to a character. That drained a lot of the effectiveness.

That said, even though I didn't completely believe the circumstances that affected Jude so much, I was able to suspend disbelief somewhat, and appreciate the character study. I found the portrayal of the way the abuse had changed him and still affected him sadly believable. Now, that was harrowing, and tremendously so. It's heartbreaking. As a reader I celebrated whenever something good happened to him, and part of me hoped it would be the thing that was going to help him start believing that he's worth loving, that he was not at fault for what was done to him. That part of me kept hoping he'd finally make a breakthrough. The other part of me knew he wouldn't, though. It's not really a spoiler; it's quite clear what this book is, and really, it's what makes it so good.

One element I found particularly thought-provoking was the relationship that develops between Jude and one of his friends. After many years (and this book covers many decades, all weirdly taking place at a time that feels like more or less the present), they become a couple, and that has its own big challenges. What's most interesting is that I've seen this described as a gay novel, but I don't think it is. I don't think Jude is gay (the other guy is bisexual, I would say). It feels more like this romantic relationship is the only model they have to deepen their friendship, even though that doesn't really fit with what Jude needs (and because that is the case, it doesn't quite fit with what his partner needs). That was a particularly successful aspect of the book for me.

As I mentioned in my final Man Booker post, after finishing this I really thought the bookies were right and it was going to win it. I'm still surprised it didn't!

MY GRADE: A B+.

Read more...

Only Enchanting, by Mary Balogh

TITLE: Only Enchanting
AUTHOR: Mary Balogh

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: Signet

SETTING: Early 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: #4 in the Survivors' Club series

The Survivors' Club: Six men and one woman, all wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, their friendship forged during their recovery at Penderris Hall in Cornwall. Now, in the fourth novel of the Survivors' Club series, Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, has left this refuge to find his own salvation-in the love of a most unsuspecting woman.…

Flavian, Viscount Ponsonby, was devastated by his fiancée's desertion after his return home. Now the woman who broke his heart is back-and everyone is eager to revive their engagement. Except Flavian, who, in a panic, runs straight into the arms of a most sensible yet enchanting young woman.

Agnes Keeping has never been in love-and never wishes to be. But then she meets the charismatic Flavian, and suddenly Agnes falls so foolishly and so deeply that she agrees to his impetuous proposal of marriage.

When Agnes discovers that the proposal is only to avenge his former love, she's determined to flee. But Flavian has no intention of letting his new bride go, especially now that he too has fallen so passionately and so unexpectedly in love.

Only Enchanting is part of the Survivors' Club series. The 'club' in question is a group of people who bonded over the traumatic effects on their lives of the Napoleonic Wars. Recovering together led to a strong friendship and the seven, six men and a woman, meet up once a year to catch up. Well, by the fourth book in the series, and given that each of the first three has featured one of them falling in love and getting married, their gatherings have become larger and larger. This year they're coming together at Vincent's (from The Arrangement), since the dates of their meeting fall shortly after his wife, Sophia, is due to give birth.

For Flavian, Lord Ponsonby, this comes at a very good time. His former fiancé, who deserted him when he came back from war with brains pretty scrambled after being kicked in the head by his horse, is now widowed. Worse: his and her family make it very clear that they hope for a renewal of their relationship. Flavian is in a bit of a panic.

He finds a distraction in Agnes Keeping, a widow who's good friends with Sophia. He's very attracted to her, and she falls in love with him practically at first sight. And of course, since she's a respectable woman and a friend of his friend's wife, the only real way to do something about that attraction is marriage.

Balogh is one fo the few historical romance authors I still read, but I think I might be falling out with her as well. It may well be an "it's not you, book, it's me" thing, but I'm afraid Flavian and Agnes bored me to tears. I didn't find anything about them interesting, or feel they were particularly well-developed characters, and there really didn't seem to be any sort of realistic conflict keeping them apart. This series started out well, but the last couple of installments have been a bit meh and suffered from characters with motivations that didn't quite make sense, and this continued that trend.

I thought things might get a bit better a the halfway point of the book, when the focus changed from the self-contained and boring romance to the drama of dealing with Flavian's family and his ex-fiancé. Things did slightly perk up then, but that improvement didn't last long, and the conflicts that came up felt like much ado about nothing. Flavian's attitude towards Velma never really gelled. Why is he in such a panic? And while Agnes' issues with her mother (who left the family when Agnes was very young) could have been really interesting, they felt like they came out of nowhere at the end of the book, and Balogh didn't really do much with them.

MY GRADE: This was a C. Meh for me, but your mileage may vary. I think I should probably reread the (as I remember) wonderful Slightly Dangerous and see if it really is just me and not Balogh.

PS - It tickled me that Flavian was Viscount Ponsonby. There was a real Viscount Ponsonby who was alive at the time (although he was not created Viscount Ponsonby until a little bit later), and he was the one who was basically responsible for Uruguay being an independent country (to explain it very simplistically, we wanted to join up with what's now Argentina, but a buffer state between Argentina and Brazil was better for Britain's commercial interests, so here we are).

Read more...

Nice Dragons Finish Last, by Rachel Aaron

TITLE: Nice Dragons Finish Last
AUTHOR: Rachel Aaron

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 287
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Futuristic, alternate-universe
TYPE: Urban fantasy
SERIES: #1 in the Heartstrikers series

As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: keep quiet, don’t cause trouble, and stay out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't fly in a family of ambitious magical predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.

Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ--a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit--Julius has one month to prove he can be a ruthless dragon or kiss his true shape goodbye forever. But in a city of modern mages and vengeful spirits where dragons are considered monsters to be exterminated, he’s going to need some serious help to survive this test.

He only hopes humans are more trustworthy than dragons...

I first came to Rachel Aaron's writing with her Paradox trilogy, written as Rachel Bach. That was sci-fi with a strong dollop of romance. I loved it, so I took the plunge with this book, which is urban fantasy. That's a subgenre I've tried again and again and it's usually not my thing, but there are always exceptions.

The story is set in sort of post-apocalyptic world, where a disaster woke up long-sleeping magical forces and created all sorts of ructions. Our hero, Julius, is a dragon shifter who's part of one of the biggest clans, the Heartstrikers. Dragons are wild, violent creatures, feared by all humans and most other magical beings, and they take pride in this.

The problem is that Julius' natural inclination is to be nice. He'd rather deal with others reasonably and reach a mutually beneficial conclusion than threaten and demand on pain of his counterpart being eaten. His mother and leader of the clan, Bethesda, is not happy about this. She's tried all sorts of tactics to harden up Julius (some of which almost killed him), but nothing's worked. So she makes a final attempt: she bounds Julius to his human form, preventing him from shifting into a dragon, and sends him to the Detroit Free Zone. This is a particularly dangerous area for dragons, as they are forbidden and this rule is enforced by one of the few beings much more powerful than dragons. While there, he must accomplish a mission set by one of his brothers, and if he can't, he's done for.

With the help of Marci Novalli, a mage Julius meets and forms an alliance with on his first night in the DFZ, Julius must find a way to prove himself to his family without betraying his nature.

I'm glad to report this was one of the happy exceptions where I actually liked an UF title. I mean, the UF aspects of it weren't that successful. All the dragon politics and plotting here were my least favourite part of the book, mainly because it was all complicated and twisted to the point that it was preposterous and the motivations didn't make sense.

The thing is, I loved the characters. I loved Julius' kindness and intelligence and his cleverness in coming at problems sideways. I loved they way he started out lacking in confidence (and who could blame him?), but still made a decision to stop trying to be a good dragon in the traditional definition and start operating the way his moral code told him was right. And I loved his increasing realisation (which is no spoiler, the reader can see this coming a mile off) that acting that way is much more effective than the usual draconic action... making his way the real draconic way! It was all heart-warming in the best of ways, particularly the sections with Marci, when he realises how wonderful it is to be appreciated for what he actually is.

Marci is possibly a bit less developed and has less of a journey than Julius, but she's still a character in her own right, rather than simply a potential romantic interest. And I l iked that she brings quite a lot to the table in terms of power.

I also liked the world Aaron has created. There's lots of potential there, and I will happily read more books in this setting. Oh, and the humour. I may not have quite conveyed it in my review above, but for all the potentially disastrous consequences and the constant threats to kill Julius, there's quite a lot of humour there. The juxtaposition is hard to pull off, but I think Aaron does it.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Read more...

Pray For Silence, by Linda Castillo

TITLE: Pray For Silence
AUTHOR: Linda Castillo

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 304
PUBLISHER: Minotaur

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: Book #2 in the Kate Burkholder series. Follows Sworn to Silence

The sound of a scream in the early morning dawn leads to a case that will change Kate Burkholder's life irrevocably...

When the police arrive at the Amish farmstead in Painters Mill they can't imagine the horror that awaits them. An entire family slaughtered: the men shot, the young women tortured and killed. The Amish are peace-loving, gentle folk and the town is shocked by what appears to be a particularly brutal - and random killing. But is it random?

Every family has its secrets. Kate knows that better than anyone. And as she and Agent John Tomasetti dig deeper into the victims' lives they discover a young woman who was living a lie. A girl who had to live in silence.

With her own past resonating - Kate knows she has to maintain some distance. From the case, and from Tomasetti. She knows what could happen if she gets too close. But when she puts herself in the line of fire - she realizes that, this time, there may be no going back.

This series centres arount Kate Burkholder, who's Chief of Police in the small Ohio town of Painters Mill. Kate grew up in an Amish family but left the community as a teenager. Still, her past helps her deal with cases involving any members of the large Amish community in the area, as they have a tendency to mistrust the "English" police.

In this, the second book in the series, Kate must investigate the shockingly brutal murder of an entire Amish family. Initial enquiries indicate that the Planks were upstanding members of the community and had no enemies. Why would anyone kill them, and with such vicious violence and cruelty that motives like robbery make no sense? But Kate soon discovers that, like everyone else, members of the Plank family had secrets. And with the help of John Tomasetti, her on-and-off lover, currently on leave from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Kate must get to the bottom of them.

I think I'm done with this series. Kate Burkholder is a bad cop: bad in the sense of her investigations being illogical and downright dumb, and bad in the sense of her being utterly contemptuous of suspects' civil rights. I might read a book with such a main character if they're a sort of anti-hero protagonist, but as far as the narration is concerned, Kate is a great cop and all her actions are justified (and none of what are clearly lapses in judgment have any negative consequences).

So, a family has been massacred, no indication of drugs whatsoever, and yet Kate's first instinct is to go harass the locals who she suspects (knows, as far as she's concerned) make meth. Why? Just because they are bad people and she judges they deserve to be harassed, even when there's nothing to indicate they've done anything wrong. Obvious lines of enquiry (e.g. which men were frequent visitors to the store where young Mary Plank worked?) must wait till much later.Then she decides she'll go harass someone because he once assaulted an Amish man, and there are indications that was a hate crime. The guy goads her (pretty mildly, to be honest), and she responds by assaulting him with her baton. And when the guy complains, both Tomasetti and her deputy, who were in the room, say they didn't see anything. Classic. It takes some doing to make me sympathise with scum like these guys, but Castillo manages it. In both those interactions, I was on the side of the suspects, not Kate's, and it really shouldn't have been that way. There were a couple of instances which were along the same lines in the previous book, too, so it's not a problem that's likely to get better.

Additionally, both the first and second books in the series have young women tortured horribly and graphically, in ways that feel exploitative and titillating. If I'd felt more positively about Kate I might have given this series another shot and hoped this trend didn't continue. As it is, I'm done. Shame, because Castillo's previous books were just as dark but in a much more imaginative, original way, and with much better characters.

MY GRADE: A D.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: The narrator is the same as in book 1, Kathleen McInerney. I liked her in that book, but she started to get on my nerves in this one. The voice she does for Tomasetti really isn't great (she does it raspy, but to me, in a way that crosses the line into creepy). Also, there was a particular scene where Kate is interrogating a young man with learning disabilities, and the way McInerney did her questions, exageratedly as if she was talking to a young child, disturbed me (well, Kate does describe him as "mentally retarded", which is a whole 'nother problem, and which McInerney might have taken as a clue as to what her attitude might be!).

Read more...

October 2015 reads

I didn't do a great deal of reading this month, and it was mostly a bit meh. Only one really good book, and it wasn't romance. I haven't read a good (B+) romance since July, and there weren't many in the first half of the year, either. I suspect it might be me, not the genre. I'm getting really picky.




1 - The Italians, by John Hooper: B+
review coming soon

This is a collection of essays about Italy and Italians, written by an author who lived there as a foreign correspondent for many years. I really enjoyed it, and recognised much of what he described, as we've inherited quite a lot of these attitudes and customs in Uruguay!




2 - Don't Want To Miss A Thing, by Jill Mansell: B-
review coming soon

Ostensibly about a man who gives up his care-free London life to take guardianship of his baby niece after his sister dies and becomes friends with his neighbour. These two are central characters, but this is just as much about the people in the Cotswolds village he moves to. It's nice, but not really great.




3 - Only Enchanting, by Mary Balogh: C-
review coming soon

Part of the Survivors' series. The characters bored me to tears. It got mildly interesting at several points but never for long!




4 - All Seated on the Ground, by Connie Willis: C
review coming soon

A Christmas story with aliens! I liked the idea, but the madcap nature of it got to be a bit much for me, even in under 130 pages.



5 - In Her Defense, by Julianna Keyes: D
review here

The heroine is an ambitious lawyer who was the villain in a previous book, and I love difficult heroines. I didn't love this book, though. I particularly had trouble with the romance, as I didn't like the hero or believe they were in love.



6 - A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James: DNF
review (such as it is!) here

Winner of the Man Booker Prize this year. This is a story about the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. It was the last of the listed books that I got to, and the writing really didn't appeal to me. I'm wondering if I was just getting a bit burnt out and should give it another shot.




7 - Turbulence, by Jordan Castillo Price: still reading
review coming soon

Originally published in serial format. I'm reading the collection all in one go. The plot involves a pilot and a flight attendant and mysterious goings-on in the Bermuda Triangle. Ok so far.




8 - The Monogram Murders, by Sophie Hannah: still reading
review coming soon

Reading this for book club. It's a new Hercule Poirot book, authorised by the Agatha Christie estate. So far it's the worst book I've read this year.

Read more...

November 2015 wish list

I'm almost back to normal after holidays and a really busy period as well, so back to posting my wish list for the next month!


Books I'm definitely planning to get


Jeweled Fire, by Sharon Shinn (Nov 3)

New entry in the Elemental Blessings series. I love the world Shinn has created in this series, and though the second book wasn't quite as fantastic as the first one, I have high hopes for this one.





Stars of Fortune, by Nora Roberts (Nov 3)

First in a new trilogy called The Guardians. The last trilogy was pretty crap and it's been a while since Roberts has done a good one, but I can't not give her a try!





Playing with Fire, by Tess Gerritsen (Nov 5)

The main thing to note with this one is that it's not part of the Rizzoli/Isles series, but a standalone thriller. Seems to have a bit of a paranormal twist, too. I'll totally read it.





S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard (Nov 9)

Non fiction. I love Mary Beard as a public figure and broadcaster,and the reviews of this one have been really good.





Once Upon a Marquess, by Courtney Milan (Nov 10)

This has been on my wish list marked as "coming out soon" since July. It's actually showing with a Nov 10th date on Milan's website, so I'm thinking it might actually be about to come out this time! What's it about? Who cares, it's Courtney Milan!




Books that interest me and I'll keep an eye on


The Game Plan, by Kristen Callihan (Nov 1)

Callihan's NA books are of the type that is not usually my thing (regular girl falls and high-status guy -an NFL player, int his case), but the first was actually an ok read (still need to review that one!). This one seems to have a virgin hero, so I might give it a shot.





Burn It Up, by Cara McKenna (Nov 3)

Just noting this one, at this stage. I have the first in this series, but I haven't read it yet. It's a motorcycle club book, which is really, REALLY not my thing, but it's Cara McKenna, who can pretty much sell me on anything. We'll see.





Smoke and Mirrors, by Elly Griffiths (Nov 5)

I haven't been 100% enamoured of the Elly Griffiths books I've read, but this one sounds really good. It's a different series from the one I read, it's set in Brighton in the 1950s during pantomime season, and the crimes seem to have some sort of fairy tale inspiration. Too tempting!





Incapable, by Ainslie Paton (Nov 8)

The hero is a voice actor, which, as an audiobook fan, is something I find fascinating.





Unnatural, by Joanna Chambers (Nov 24)

Sounds interesting. It's about two childhood friends who became estranged "after a passionate encounter". One of the guys, the one who (I deduce from the blurb) caused the rift, is determined to restore their friendship. I've liked Chambers' writing before, so I might try this.

Read more...

The Circle, by Dave Eggers

TITLE: The Circle
AUTHOR: Dave Eggers

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 504
PUBLISHER: Knopf

SETTING: Near future, in the US
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

Fast, thrilling, compulsively addictive - The Circle is Dave Eggers's timely novel about our obsession with the internet.

When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails, social media, and finances with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of transparency. Mae can't believe her great fortune to work for them - even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public...

Mae Holland's humdrum life changes when she gets at job at The Circle, a company that's basically Google + Facebook on steroids. The Circle is the product of a backlash against internet abuse. By linking everyone's online activities into one real identity they have, they claim, brought civility to the web.

Initially, all goes well. The campus-style offices are all about fun and a shared social life, and when her father gets ill, the company ensures her health insurance covers him. She's ecstatic at working for a company that treats its employees so well and that is trying to do good in the world, creating a more civil, transparent society. But soon things cross into territory that is not quite as comfortable. Transparency means that privacy is suspicious by definition, and some of the ways in which this manifests in everyday life makes Mae feel some twinges of discomfort.

The Circle, for all that it is satire, is probably one of the scariest books I've read. It's scary because it's believable and plausible. It's basically taking ideas that really exist in the world today (and which seem pretty reasonable!) to their extreme but impeccably logical conclusions. It's also scary because since its publication, several of those ideas have actually moved in the exact directions posited in the book, and because most of them feel like a continuation of what's already going on. If we've already privatised big chunks of the justice system and are thinking of privatising things like defense procurement, why not the running of elections?

So to me, as a commentary on society and the direction in which we seem to be going, this was great (I think my favourite moment was Mae's grave decision whether to send a frown to some evil Guatemalan paramilitaries, and her thoughts about how brave this made her). But this is fiction, so how does it work as a story, the device Eggers uses to develop his message?

Actually, pretty well. There are issues. There are elements that are predictable (e.g. the identity of the mysterious guy who becomes Mae's secret lover), and it's not exactly subtle (the company has procured and keeps in a tank a rare creature from the deep sea, a transparent shark who devours and destroys everything, including a turtle who looks a little bit like one of Mae's viewers' grandfather... if you don't see it immediately, and without the need for the explicit explanation provided, as a metaphor for the ultimate destructiveness and voracity of the Circle's drive for transparency, then you weren't paying attention). But it works, and that's because of Mae.

Yes, Mae is a bit thin as a character. She doesn't have much agency and is very reactive, almost submissive. But that, I felt, was the point. One of the things I thought was best about the book, and this might be spoilerish, so keep reading at your own risk, is that it turns out we're seeing things from the point of view of a character I didn't expect. I expected Mae would turn out to be someone who'd start out believing, but who'd increasingly feel trapped by the oppressiveness of the Circle. But no, Mae turns out to be a true believer. She's not in denial about the negative consequences (which come through loud and clear to the reader, even through her point of view); she just doesn't see them as negative consequences. She simply cannot conceive of points of view different from her own being other than crazy or antisocial. They are therefore discountable, and the people who hold them need to be brought in for their own good. It's chilling. So, in effect, the protagonist of the book is the villain, and her villainy is of the passive, unquestioning kind. And this comes to a truly fantastic climax with the ending. It was totally the right one.

MY GRADE: An A-.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator, Dion Graham, was brilliant. We're in Mae's point of view, so I was a bit surprised to see that the narrator was male, but given that Mae is not much more than a vehicle for Eggers' views (even though she herself doesn't espouse them), that kind of made sense. He got the nuances right, and I particularly liked the little bit of dismissive laughter in his voice when Mae made her rationalisations to be able to accept something particularly troublesome.

Read more...

Two disappointing DNFs

These are two books I was really sure I'd enjoy. I didn't.

TITLE: Cinder
AUTHOR: Marissa Meyer

I love stories inspired in fairy tales, and a cyborg Cinderella set in a sort of post-apocalyptic, plague-ravaged Beijing sounded really intriguing. Cinder is a mechanic, repairing all sorts of machinery (even other cyborgs) for her family, who exploit her. Things kick off when Prince Kai brings her a favourite cyborg of his for her to repair.

I just couldn't get into this one properly. The world-building is a mess. History and social structures seem either shallow or not thought-out at all, and some aspects are downright contradictory (like the status of cyborgs. I didn't buy that for a minute). I was particularly disappointed to see that Meyer did nothing at all with the New Beijing setting. This could be set absolutely anywhere. The characters don't ring true, either, which in my book, is even worse than bad world-building.

Lots of people seem to like this one, but it didn't work for me at all. I gave up before the halfway point.

MY GRADE: A DNF.



TITLE: When A Scot Ties the Knot
AUTHOR: Tessa Dare

This is about a young woman who suffers from quite severe social anxiety, to the point that she resorts to inventing a fiancé to keep relatives from forcing her to participate in the marriage mart. Problem is, the random Scottish name and rank she invents actually belong to a real man, and he ends up receiving her letters, in which she explains exactly what she's doing (which doesn't make a great deal of sense). Years later, once the war is over, he seeks her out. This is not because he fell in love with her letters, or anything like that, but because she's a property owner and he's desperate to give the men he commanded during the war, and who've been abandoned by the system, a place to settle and build a life. Ergo, she must marry him or he'll reveal her deception.

I didn't have an objection to the basic plot. Dare herself has made me buy more preposterous stuff. I didn't even have an objection in principle to the lack of historical accuracy. Dare herself has written books I've enjoyed which don't even attempt to be historically accurate. But this one just didn't work for me. In my opinion, it failed the internal logic test. The characters and motivations made no sense, even in the context of the situations Dare had created. I kept going "Why ever would she not do X?", and "Why would he do Y?" And the humour, which has always been one of the main attractions of Dare's books, just didn't appeal. The whole thing felt completely insubstantial... very Avon, I'm sorry to say. Not for me. I stopped reading at about the halfway point when I realised I didn't care in the least about these people.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

Read more...

An Heir of Uncertainty, by Alyssa Everett

TITLE: An Heir of Uncertainty
AUTHOR: Alyssa Everett

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 250
PUBLISHER: Carina Press

SETTING: Early 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Yorkshire, 1820

Lina, Lady Radbourne, thought being a countess would rescue her from poverty. Unfortunately, her young groom failed to plan for the future, and his drunken accident left her widowed and pregnant. Now Colonel Winstead Vaughan—Win—will inherit her late husband's fortune…unless she gives birth to a boy. Win is her natural enemy, so why can't she stop thinking about him?

Win is stunned to learn he stands to inherit a vast fortune. He's even more surprised to find himself falling for the beautiful, spirited Lady Radbourne, who is the one woman who stands in the way of a life he'd only imagined.

When someone tries to poison Lady Radbourne, suspicion falls on Win. There's a clever killer in their midst, and if Win doesn't solve the mystery fast, Lina may perish. He needs to win her trust, but how can he prove it's she he wants, and not the fortune?

Lately I've been forcing myself to try more new historical romance authors, as it's a subgenre I used to love and now I've almost abandoned. Way too many have been unsuccessful experiments, but fortunately, this was one of the rare successes.

Lina grew up in an impoverished family. When a young local nobleman became completely besotted with her she decided to accept his marriage proposal and become Lady Radbourne, ending all her financial woes. She didn't love him, but she was fond of him, so it didn't seem very wrong.

But not long afterwards, everything goes to pot. Her young husband is, well, young, and he behaves exactly like you might expect a spoilt young nobleman to behave. His foolhardy, risky behaviour ends up with him getting killed trying to win a bet while hopelessly intoxicated. And now the title and his property are going to a cousin, unless Lina is expecting a child and that child is male.

And it turns out that Lina is actually pregnant. The problem is that right after the accident, in a conversation in which she was still in shock and the magistrate was being a bit too delicate in his enquiries, she gave him the impression that she wasn't. So when the cousin in question, Colonel Win Vaughan, arrives to claim his property, daughter and teenaged brother in tow, it's a big shock to him to find that his future is not as secure as he'd been given to believe.

I thought An Heir of Uncertainty was really solid. I liked Everett’s writing, which flowed wonderfully and carried me through. Most of all, I enjoyed the characters and the conflict. Both Lina and Win are sensible, grown-up people, and that's one of the things that attracts them to each other. They're placed in an uncomfortable situation by the circumstances, and it's circumstances that aren't really anyone's fault. All, even the magistrate, behaved reasonably. But rather than set Win and Lina up as enemies who lust after each other (as I thought would be the case afer an inauspicious first meeting), Everett has them push through the mistrust that results and get to know and like each other.

I also liked the secondary characters, particularly Freddy, Win's teenaged brother. Freddy is a young man modern readers will most likely recognise as being somewhere on the autism spectrum, with his obsession with pigeon rearing and his difficulties functioning normally in society. Obviously, that's not recognised as such in the time period, and he's just considered eccentric and weird. It's a fond portrayal, and the way Win interacted with Freddy was sweet.

The book also has a pretty strong mystery (much as I liked the romance, the internal conflict was not particularly substantial, so having a strong mystery was good). Someone is trying to harm Lina, either by making her miscarry or killing her. Win would be ann obvious suspect, although it seems he's being targetted as well. It was really intriguing, and I enjoyed trying to guess what was going on. Unfortunately, the solution was not quite as good as I’d hoped, as it relied on a certain motivation that just makes me sigh and I didn't find particularly convincing.

Still this was good. I'd happily read more by Alyssa Everett.

MY GRADE: A B.

Read more...

In Her Defense, by Julianna Keyes

TITLE: In Her Defense
AUTHOR: Julianna Keyes

COPYRIGHT: 2015
PAGES: 300
PUBLISHER: Carina Press

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Follows Time Served

Caitlin Dufresne has never loved anyone as much as she loves winning. A ruthless fifth-year associate at an elite Chicago law firm, she's on the fast track to partner... until a stupid, serious error enrages her bosses. Caitlin's continued refusal to share work—or credit—lands her a forced two-week vacation. She needs to regroup and learn to be part of a team, not just the star.

When she meets Eli Grant, head of the firm's IT department, Caitlin knows the overgrown frat boy isn't her type. But too much alcohol and a very public game of Truth or Dare turn into a dirty, breathless one-night stand. Which turns into a (mostly naked) two-week fling. Which turns into something that makes Caitlin incredibly nervous, despite the great sex.

Eli shows her the many upsides to sleeping in, and for the first time ever, Caitlin has more than the law waiting for her at home. But when she returns to the office and the relentless demands of a high-profile case, Caitlin must decide if winning this one is worth losing Eli forever.

I love difficult heroines, so when I read a few reviews about this book, it was an easy decision to buy it.

Our heroine, Caitlin Dufresne, was apparently the villain in the first book in this series, Time Served. She's a star at her law firm, working harder than anyone else and getting outstanding results. She also makes sure her colleagues see her disdain at their lazy work habits (imagine, doing only 14-hour days!) and that everyone is aware of just how good she is. Her non-stop working habit bites her in the ass one day, though, when sheer exhaustion causes her to make a mistake.

The partners at her law firm are not angry at her, but they are worried and want to make sure she won't just burn out. Their solution is to force her to take a holiday, and while she hands over her cases, they place restrictions on her work times, enforced by limits on when she can operate her computer. This brings her into conflict with the firm's head of IT, Eli Grant, and when they run into each other at a bar after work, the initial antagonism turns into something else.

I liked the idea of a bitchy, unapologetic heroine. However, what I got really wasn't good. My feelings about Caitlin herself were mixed, and about the romance itself wholeheartedly negative.

I'll start with Caitlin. Yes, she's unapologetic about her ambition and her sex life and doesn't suffer fools gladly at all. But at the same time, she's an asshole. There's a particular scene close to the start where she goes off at a guy in accounting who's pointed out to the partners her high level of billing, and the stuff she says to him points at some really ugly attitudes. I just couldn't buy that she'd changed by the end of the book, not without some major introspection. It was a bit like those people who go on racist rants when they're drunk and then try to blame the drink. Sorry, that was inside you, and the drink let it out.

Another problem was that Caitlin's character didn't really gel for me. She's supposed to be this fantastic litigator, but has absolutely no emotional intelligence. Well, we're told she has it when interacting with witnesses and others in the courtroom, but she demonstrates none of it outside of the courtroom. Does she just turn it off? Because she can't understand other people's motivations worth shit, and she makes quite a few decisions and assumptions here that are just plain stupid.

The romance didn't work for me at all. For starters, I found Eli very unappealing. Actually, I thought he was a passive-aggressive little shit. I think the book would have been improved by us readers seeing Eli's point of view, rather than have first-person narration from Caitlin. The way Keyes wrote it, when we have situations such as him blowing Caitlin off and lying to her about what his plans are so that he can hang out with his ex because he's "confused", he feels like a sleazy liar. If we'd been in his head I might have been a bit more sympathetic. I wasn't. I didn't want Caitlin to forgive him. I wanted her to dump him and go for someone better, because I didn't believe he loved her. Nor did I believe she loved him.

I also didn't like that Keyes found it necessary to make Eli the heir of a powerful family, rather than just simply a guy with a normal job, as is initially setu p. I think part of the problem is that Keyes has clearly no concept of what being head of IT in a corporate setting actually looks like. She (and by extension, Caitlin) seems to think a head of IT would be a basement-dwelling nerd who repairs computers (she even has him drilling holes in the walls in the new office). Erm, no, it's a corporate, management job, at least at the sort of level and in the sort of company she's describing here.

I also had issues with the portrayal of other women: they're either bitchy and desperate for men (Caitlin's colleagues, the women who are after Eli), or oblivious and unbelievable (Caitlin's sister). Ugh!

I even had problems with the cover! I know that the stuff at the bottom of the image is supposed to be a bedsheet, but my eyes keep reading it as the guy's shoulder and back, and that grip looks painful!

MY GRADE: A D. I did finish it, at least, but I enjoyed very little of it.

Read more...

Man Booker Prize reading 2015

The Man Booker Prize winner for 2015 will be announced tomorrow, so I thought I'd post my impressions of the nominated books. As I have for the past few years, I have read (or at least, had a very good go at reading) most of the books on the longlist and all of the ones on the shortlist.

I should stress that I do this not out of a sense of obligation, but because in previous years I've discovered many truly wonderful books on these lists. Not one or two, but several, more than enough to make the whole thing worth it.

This year it was different. I had a really high proportion of DNFs, and this was DNF after reading a good portion, at least a third and more than that in several cases, so I did invest a significant amount of time in those books. Half of the six books on the shortlist were DNFs! There were a few ok books, and only a couple that truly worked for me.

I don't think it's necessarily that it was a bad selection, more that the judges' concept of a good book does not ring my bells. It seemed to be very much a writers' selection (and yes, I realise not all of the judges this year are authors), in that formal experimentation seemed to be more important than whether the books delivered.

All that said, the two books that worked best for me are actually on the shortlist, which is unusual (my favourites usually don't make it through).



A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler, was the one I enjoyed the most. It is the story of a family. At first sight it's a very domestic story, and when you go deeper, it still is a domestic story. And that doesn't mean that it doesn't deliver important insights or striking moments of truth. I loved that about it, as I loved that it was also a really good, satisfying read. The structural experimentation (shifting points of view, non-linear timeline) really worked for me here. Full review here.



A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara was one I really wasn't looking forward to, based on all I'd heard about it (and it was probably the most talked about book on the list). I can't say I enjoyed it, but it was actually really good. It starts out as the story of 4 friends in New York but ends up being mainly the story of one of them, Jude, a man who survived horrific abuse as a child. This abuse has left him badly damaged, both physically and psychologically, and Hanagihara explores this in long, harrowing detail. It's tough to read but very powerful. However, I think it would have been even more powerful if the author had not made the childhood abuse quite as extreme, to the point that it made me disconnect because I found some of it unbelievable. I think a little bit less would have been more in this particular case. Anyway, I read it late and finished it while on holiday last week, so no review yet, but I think I'll do a full one soon.


Satin Island, by Tom McCarthy, was a weird one and I still don't know what to make of it. It's basically a guy philosophising about random stuff, as I said in my review "the sort of moderinst crap I detest: pretentious, self-indulgent, uncaring of the reader". But I actually enjoyed myself while I was reading it, so maybe it's not as uncaring of the reader as it might seem. I'm not sure I got the point of it (reading reviews, the theory that resonates the most is that it's satirising how people these days feel that every minute detail of their lives is significant of worthy of being examined in detail), but I found it compelling and still remember quite a few haunting images from it. Full review here.


I had high hopes for The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma. It tells the story of four boys in a small town in Nigeria. However, the writing just didn't work for me at all and I didn't connect with the characters, so I gave up when I was about 40% in. A shame, because it sounded like the story was right up my alley. Slightly longer review here.



I really liked the first sections of The Year of the Runaways, by Sunjeev Sahota. It was a story I wanted to read, an imagining of the real people behind the tabloid headlines about illegal workers and sham marriages. I liked the variety of the characters' backstories and the writing. And then I got to a scene in which a previously really sympathetic character tries to rape a young woman and it's portrayed in the vilest, most toxic way, the narration making it clear that it was just that he was overcome by his feelings. I quote the offending scene in my review. No. Just no. I lost all trust in the author right then, and put down the book.



Finally, the last book on the shortlist is A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James. It tells the story of an assassination attempt on Bob Marley, and through it, the violent history of Jamaica in the 70s and 80s. There are a lot (and I do mean a lot) of characters and a fair bit of stream-of-consciousness narration. It was the last book I picked up and I did so while I was on holiday, so I possibly wasn't able to give it the sustained attention it needed. I ended up DNFing it as well, I'm afraid.

In addition to the books on the shortlist, I read most of the books on the longlist (mainly before the shortlist was announced... I'm always crap at guessing which ones will go through!).



I liked The Moor's Account, by Leila Lalami, but it was one that felt more insubstantial in hindsight than while I was reading it. It tells the story of a real and doomed 16th century expedition to the Americas, told from the point of view of a black enslaved man whose perspective has been excised from recorded history. It felt fresh and I liked some of the things it had to say about erasure and the importance of being able to tell your own story. However, thinking back, a lot of it feels episodic and repetitive. Full review here.


I really disliked Anuradha Roy's Sleeping On Jupiter. It's the story of a young orphaned girl, Nomi, who grew up in an ashram in an Indian temple town, a place where the spiritual front shown to spiritual tourists covered horrific abuse perpetrated by the guru. Years later, Nomi returns to the town, ostensibly to film a documentary. Interspersed with her story are two other threads: the story of three old ladies on their last holiday together and that of a local guide who's sexually obsessed with a young man. The book started out well, but it soon unraveled completely. The different threads felt really disjointed, and none of them were developed into anything that made any sense. The whole book felt pointless. Review here.


I wasn't sure what to expect of Lila, by Marilynne Robinson. I tried to read Gilead a while ago and although I really liked the characters and the voice, the lack of any narrative drive whatsoever made it very easy to put down and gave me no incentive pick it back up. Lila had what I liked about Gilead (genuinely decent characters and some really lovely humour), but it also had a bit more stuff going on and propelling the book forward. I thought it ended with a bit of a whimper and kind of fizzled out, really, but on the whole, I enjoyed it.


Anne Enright is an author I've long wanted to try, but The Green Road was a disappointment. It's the story of an Irish family, but the writing did not engage me in the least. In fact, I found it kind of repellent, and gave up. Review here.


The Chimes, by Anna Smaill was probably the title on the longlist that sounded most intriguing. It's basically a futuristic dystopia, set in a world where the titular chimes erase people's memories every day. My problem with it was that I didn't find the way it dealt with this particularly convincing (i.e. the things that were remembered and forgotten didn't make much sense to me). So it was another DNF. Review here.

The other two books on the longlist, which I didn't get to in time (and I'll be honest, they didn't really interest me) were Did You Ever Have a Family, by Billy Clegg and The Illuminations, by Andrew O'Hagan.

---

So, predictions. A Little Life is the bookies' favourite and if it wins, I would be happy with the decision. I did have some issues with it, but it's got substance and style and it's really good. I enjoyed A Spool of Blue Thread more, and it would probably be my pick, but I don't really have much hope that a novel that is so much about the domestic could win. It did get on the shortlist, though, so I won't abandon all hope! I have a feeling The Year of the Runaways might be the dark horse here, as the story it tells is very relevant, but if I had to put money on it, I would probably go for A Little Life.

Read more...