Demon's Fire, by Emma Holly

TITLE: Demon's Fire
AUTHOR: Emma Holly

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Alternate reality
TYPE: Erotic romance
SERIES: Part of the Tales of the Demon World series

The thrilling new erotic paranormal romance from the USA Today bestselling author

Fleeing the routine life her family wanted for her, Beth joins an archaeological dig spearheaded by her cousin Charles. For such an adventurer, the desert city of Bhamjran is perfect for making unusual discoveries-especially when it comes to forbidden appetites. Like his own unnatural desire for a Yama demon. And as he and Beth are about to learn, some Yama find humans equally irresistible...

This was this month's random pick from my TBR, and it was a random pick that made me happy when I saw what book it was. I like Emma Holly and most of her books have really worked for me, so I'm not too sure why it's been almost 10 years since I've read one.

This is part of Holly's series about the Yama. The earlier books were set in Ohram, which is basically an alternate version of Victorian England, where a race of very advanced beings who live underground have been discovered a few decades previously. The Yama (called "demons" by humans, due to markings on their tongues that make them look like they're forked) have all sorts of technology, which gives this world a quite steampunk feel. Queen Victoria quickly realised the potential benefits of access to their tech and allowed them to settle in her empire, but people are still really wary of them. Part of this is because of their physical appearance, but part of it is because of their penchant for feeding off humans' energy, an act that, although harmful to the human if uncontrolled, can be extremely pleasurable and sensual for both sides.

This particular book is set in what seems to be an alternate version of India, a country recently conquered by the Ohramese. This alternate India is matriarchal and people (particularly women) are a lot freer about their sexuality than in Ohram.

And in keeping with that attitude, what we have here is a ménage book. On one angle of the triangle we've got Prince Pahndir, who was a character in the previous book in the series, Prince of Ice (which I must confess I barely remember). Pahndir is a prince of the Yama, who lost his beloved soulmate when she killed himself. Since Yama get only one chance at a soulmate (and for royalty it's even worse, since they can't really have proper orgasms without this person), Pahndir fell to pieces at her death, which felt to him as a huge betrayal. His family, horrified at his lack of control, faked his death and sent him away, selling him to a brothel. He lived there for years, being used to train the prostitutes (this was where we met him in the previous book, where he was the heroine's friend). At the start of this book we see his rescue, and we see him again when he's running his own brothel (where everyone is wonderfully treated, of course).

Then we've got Charles, a young Ohramese working for an expedition that's excavating an ancient tomb close to the city. Charles's background has some things in common with Pahndir. He's not royal; in fact, he's far from it: his mother was a street prostitute. When she died he ended up in a brothel himself, but he carried with him her fear of the Yama, who had just started to get settled in Ohram, and although he was terribly intrigued and tempted by the concept of their feeding off his energy, he never allowed that particular act. He is still obsessed with this by the start of this book, and when he comes in contact with Pahndir, who makes it clear his kink can be easily accomodated, the temptation becomes too strong for him.

And then there's Beth. Beth is a sheltered young Ohramese woman working in the same expedition as Charles. She's the sister of the heroine of the first book in this series, and she doesn't have any horrible things in her past. She's just adventurous and fancies Charles madly. Turns out she also becomes fascinated by Pahndir.

For the first two thirds of the book, I mostly really liked this. I loved the main relationship. Pahndir is a vulnerable, lonely character, having almost accepted that there's no one out there for him. Charles is tortured by what he sees as his kinks and has to be dragged almost kicking and screaming into his relationship with both Pahndir and Beth. Beth... well, Beth is just horny. She might be a virgin, but she has absolutely no problem accepting her somewhat unorthodox desires and just going for it with Charles, with Pahndir, with both at the same time. She's up for pretty much anything, and I thought that was great.

But there was so much here that was problematic! There were some things in the first two thirds, but then things started getting really gross and horrible, and I ended up giving up about 75% in.

At the start of the book we've got a scene where Charles goes into Beth's room while she's sleeping and they do all sorts of sexual things while she sleeps. Definitely non-consensual, but fine, I was ok to go with this in this fantastical setting.

There's also a subplot about the ancient queen whose tomb Beth and Charles' expedition is excavating. The idea is that this queen, who was extremely powerful, was highly sexed, and by being in the tomb Beth has somehow been influenced by her and sort of absorbed her insatiable appetites and her powers. She has vivid dreams about the queen's life, and we get treated to the detail of one of them, in a long dream sequence. That dreams was clearly intended to be super hot, but it wasn't to me.  The queen has a harem of men, slaves sent in as tributes by all the many tribes she's conquered, and she chooses 5 each night. They're all desperate to serve her in that way. I was icked out by this. I know it's meant to be complete fantasy and I'm being humourless and earnest here, but the concept of having sex with slaves and this being portrayed as erotic is hugely problematic to me. I didn't really find that scene erotic in the least. Actually, I probably wouldn't have even if the men involved had not been slaves... this scene involved the queen being fucked by dozens of her slaves in one night.. all I could think was "gross" and "ouch!".

But since I could kind of ignore this and it didn't really affect the real protagonists' relationship, I kept going and mostly enjoying the book. What made me delete this angrily from my kindle was what happened when the suspense subplot got going. Basically, his family have found out that Pahndir has escaped the brothel, and fear he might try to come back. They have him kidnapped by a desert tribe of female assassins. And this casually leads to horrific sexual assault that is portrayed in a way that I thought was exploitative and titillating. There's loads of this, and even the rescue scene by Beth and Charles is horrendous (they decide that since they are outnumbered they need to pretend to be people sent by the villain to properly break their captive). I just could not stomach this crap, so gave up.

No. Just, no.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell

TITLE: Eleanor and Park
AUTHOR: Rainbow Rowell

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: 1980s US
TYPE: YA
SERIES: None

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and she's never felt more alone. All mismatched clothes, mad red hair and chaotic home life, she couldn't stick out more if she tried.

Then she takes the seat on the bus next to Park. Quiet, careful and - in Eleanor's eyes - impossibly cool, Park's worked out that flying under the radar is the best way to get by.

Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall in love. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're 16, and you have nothing and everything to lose.

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is funny, sad, shocking and true - an exquisite nostalgia trip for anyone who has never forgotten their first love.

I read this for my book club, although having loved Rowell's Attachments, I almost certainly would have picked it up at some point anyway.

This is the story of two 16-year-old misfits. Eleanor is resigned to the prospect of being the weird girl at her new school. With her horrible charity shop clothes, her crazy red hair and too-large body, she fully expects no one to slide over to let her sit on the school bus. Awful as that sort of thing is, it pales in comparison to her home life. Eleanor lives with her cowed mother, her siblings, and an abusive, alcoholic step-father. She's just come back to live with them after a year of living on family and acquaintances' sofas, after her step-father kicked her out.

She's shocked when Park silently moves over and wordlessly offers her the seat next to him. Park is not quite as much of a misfit as Eleanor, but he's definitely not mainstream. He's half-Korean in a neighbourhood where mixed-race families really aren't a thing, and he's into stuff like alternative music and comic books and wearing make-up. His parents love him (and each other), but they (and particularly his white father) don't get him at all.

Neither Park nor Eleanor mean to even talk to each other. They have enough trouble already. But they do, and they discover they have things in common. Slowly, they discover they like the same things and each other, and fall in love. But things aren't easy.

Eleanor and Park are fantastic characters. Reading about their lives is like a punch in the guts. Eleanor's life, in particular, was brilliantly done. We're not told everything at the beginning, we just know there is something obviously wrong in that house, and at the beginning we only get hints of the creepiness, like Richie not allowing shower curtains. As the book progresses, we see more and more details. How he's controlling. The way he turns the other kids into his allies. Eleanor has to be always on edge, always walking on eggshells, trying not to be noticed, not to set him off. Even thinking about living that way stresses me out, imagine actually having to go through it. Rowell builds the dread little by little by little, and it's very effective.

Eleanor's life is also a very affecting portrayal of poverty. There's one scene where she goes to her manchild dad's house to babysit and she thinks how he clearly has money, because there are all these luxuries lying around, and when she explains what she means, it's truly heartbreaking. She's talking about things like quilted loo roll.

Park's home-life, in contrast, seems like paradise to her. They're not rich, but there's enough to live well and for little luxuries (like a walkman). When she's there, she's liked and appreciated and treated with respect, even fondness. It's not perfection for Park, though. He knows he's not the son his father would like, a kid into sports and hunting and cars. His dad doesn't know what to do with a son like Park, and though he doesn't do it on purpose, this comes through loud and clear, and Park hurts.

I was completely into these two and their lives, fully absorbed and engaged. What I wasn't absorbed and engaged in, however, was the romance. And since this is a huge part of the story, it made the book as a whole not work that well for me. My problem was that it felt corny and, honestly, a bit cringey. YA romance is almost never my thing, and this one wasn't, either. I actually would have much preferred it if they'd simply been friends.

Also, there is a heavy dose of nostalgia here. The book is set in 1986 in Omaha, Nebraska, and the music and pop culture of the time are huge elements. I feel no nostalgia or fondness for any of that (it's not that I dislike it, it's just not something that's part of my culture), so all that was simply meh for me.

Still, I liked Eleanor and Park enough individually that it mostly compensates for the fact that I didn't care for them together.

MY GRADE: A B.

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Graceling, by Kristin Cashore

TITLE: Graceling
AUTHOR: Kristin Cashore

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 471
PUBLISHER: Harcourt

SETTING: Fantasy world
TYPE: Fantasy
SERIES: Graceling Realms #1, follows Fire chronologically.

In a world where people born with an extreme skill - called a Grace - are feared and exploited, Katsa carries the burden of the skill even she despises: the Grace of killing. She lives under the command of her uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, and is expected to execute his dirty work, punishing and torturing anyone who displeases him.

When she first meets Prince Po, who is Graced with combat skills, Katsa has no hint of how her life is about to change.

She never expects to become Po's friend.

She never expects to learn a new truth about her own Grace - or about a terrible secret that lies hidden far away...a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.

This is the first book in Cashore's Graceling Realm series. Well, it's the first one that came out, but chronologically, Fire takes place first, which is why I started with that one.

This takes place, not in the same place, but in the same world as Fire, some 35 years later. The Middluns is a place where a small number of people are born with what's called a Grace, an affinity and inborn ability to do something, to the point that they are incredibly good at it. Graces can go from the mundane (say, being a preternaturally good baker) to the dangerous. Katsa's is an example of the latter. Her Grace is killing.

You can't hide that you have a Grace (the mismatched eyes are a dead giveaway), and Katsa also happens to be the King's niece, so it was even more impossible. Graced individuals belong to the King by law, and King Randa finds Katsa very useful indeed. She takes care of all his dirty work and is crucial to his keeping an iron grip on power.

Having been raised to do this for her uncle, Katsa doesn't even consider the possibility of refusing to obey his orders. But she's not comfortable with the work she does, and this has led to after-hours work with the Council. The Council is a group set up by Katsa and the very few people she trusts fully to help fight injustice. The work they do makes her feel her Grace is finally being put to good use.

It is on a mission for the Council that Katsa encounters Prince Po. And that's when things start to change.

I don't want to say much more about the plot, because one of the things I absolutely loved about reading this was not knowing where things were going. All I'll say is that there is adventure and excitement and tough decisions, and through it, Katsa finally comes into her own. For all her power, the restrictions on how this power can be used have prevented her from being her own woman. The process of her throwing off her shackles and achieving true control over her own life is really, really satisfying.

Although there is so much plot and adventure here that I'd hesitate to call this a character-driven novel, I will say that the characters are really strong. Katsa herself is fantastic, but so are all the secondary characters (except, perhaps, the villain, who felt a bit more sketchily drawn). These people felt real, and I loved to see how the different relationships developed. I particularly loved the romance, even though it wasn't the focus of the novel. I loved that Katsa gains strength through it, and that Cashore never feels she needs to bring her down to make her and Po more evenly matched. And the conclusion is one that might be considered unconventional by some, but I absolutely thought it was the right one, and I loved it.

This series is amazing, and I hope Cashore publishes something (anything!) else soon.

MY GRADE: An A-.

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The All You Can Dream Buffet, by Barbara O'Neal

TITLE: The All You Can Dream Buffet
AUTHOR: Barbara O'Neal

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: Bantam

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Fiction (I don't like the term "Women's Fiction", but that's really what this is).
SERIES: None

Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah and Susan Wiggs—Barbara O’Neal’s new novel of food, friendship, and the freedom to grow your dreams brings together four very different women longing to savor the true taste of happiness.

Popular blogger and foodie queen Lavender Wills reigns over Lavender Honey Farms, a serene slice of organic heaven nestled in Oregon wine country. Lavender is determined to keep her legacy from falling into the profit-driven hands of uncaring relatives, and she wants an heir to sustain her life’s work after she’s gone. So she invites her three closest online friends—fellow food bloggers, women of varied ages and backgrounds—out to her farm. She hopes to choose one of them to inherit it—but who?

There’s Ginny, the freckle-faced Kansas cake baker whose online writing is about to lead her out of a broken marriage and into a world of sensual delights. And Ruby, young, pregnant, devoted to the organic movement, who’s looking for roots—and the perfect recipe to heal a shattered heart. Finally, Val, smart and sophisticated, a wine enthusiast who needs a fresh start for her teenage daughter after tragedy has rocked their lives. Coming together will change the Foodie Four in ways they could never have imagined, uniting them in love and a common purpose. As they realize that life doesn’t always offer a perfect recipe for happiness, they also discover that the moments worth savoring are flavored with some tears, a few surprises, and generous helping of joy.

Lavender Wills is worried about her family farm. As a young woman, Lavender escaped life on the farm for an eventful career as a flight attendant, but when she finally returned, much later in her life, she fell in love with it. As she turns 85 she's worried that her only heirs, her nephews, will turn around and sell to a developer as soon as she's gone.

Lavender has embraced technology in running and marketing the farm, and through her blog she has become really good friends with three other food bloggers. Will one of them be the right person to take over the farm instead of her nephews? With her birthday coming up, she decides to invite them over, both to finally meet them in person and to see if one of them has what it takes.

There's Ruby, a young woman who runs a vegan blog and who finds herself pregnant months after a traumatic breakup. There's Ginny, whose cake blog represents an escape from a boring life full of people (including her husband) who want nothing more than to keep her as small and miserable as possible. And there's Valerie, a wine blogger and former dancer still recovering from the death of her husband and two of her children in an accident.

I liked the premise and, initially, I liked where I thought the story seemed to be going. The setting is beautiful and I loved the supportive female friendships. But I had so, so many issues with this book, and in the end, it didn't work for me at all. So the rest of the review is really going to be a litany of complaints.

To start with, for a book that supposedly features an ensemble cast, this was very uneven. O'Neal seemed to be most interested in Ginny (who, to me, was the most tedious character -more on her later), closely followed by Ruby. There was a fair bit about Lavender, as she was basically the catalyst for everything here, but there was pretty much nothing at all about Valerie. As she was written, I really didn't see what the point of having her there was. It might be that there was more in earlier versions and she was cut out in an edit, I don't know. I just know that out of the four characters who are set out to be equal protagonists the only one who doesn't do anything in the story and who's not a point of view character is the black woman. This left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

The focus on Ginny didn't work for me, because she annoyed me. I felt she needed to take a little bit more responsibility for her choices. Yes, her husband was a piece of work, and so were her "friends" and even her mother, but there are limits. There's a point when she goes on about how she feels her husband trapped her into marriage and a life she didn't want when he got her pregnant, and she wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd poked holes in their condoms (to be fair, she's consciously exagerating here). Whoa, hang on. This was the late 80s, early 90s. She had a choice if she didn't want to have a child so young. And every single other year she had a choice to confront things and try to change them. Her husband wasn't abusive or controlling, he was just immensely selfish. And honestly, I really have absolutely no idea what was going on on the sex front. It's not much of a spoiler, so I'll go into details: they haven't had sex in like 12 years, and he's refused to discuss it whenever Ginny's tried to bring it up. But in the end it turns out he's cheated on Ginny while she's been away? Huh?

Ruby was a lot more appealing to me. She's quite a sweet character, someone who had some miserable years as a child, when she became ill with cancer, but what that's done to her is made her very ready to see and appreciate the good things in life. But the break-up (which was unexpected and abrupt) has shaken her confidence a bit, and the time with Lavender and her friend does her good.

Lavender is ok, but the characterisation is shallow, and as I've mentioned, Valerie is paper-thin.

I also had issues with the characterisation of these women as bloggers. That element felt really off. There's a fair bit of WTF, like when Ginny's love interest, whom she meets on the road as she drives to Lavender's, rings her and tells her he was worried about her, so he looked up her phone number in her blog details. Yeah, no, no one with half a brain would put her phone number (not one of those voicemail thingies, either, but her regular mobile number) up on her blog! Then there's the way she refers to people who comment regularly on her blog as "backbloggers", which is a term I've never heard before, and I've been on this scene for 14 years now (google doesn't know the word, either). Those are all details, though.

More importantly, I found it really hard to believe that Ginny's blog would be as successful as it's supposed to be, to the point of her making oodles of money out of it. From what we see of it, it's basically really bland text and pictures of cakes. Even if the pictures are incredibly amazing, I can't see them being that revolutionary. Actually, all three of the blogs that we see (we see nothing of Valerie's, of course) were pretty unappealing to me. Ginny's is bland, as I mentioned. Lavender's is very commercial... paraphrasing here, but it's kind of "Lovely day at the farm today, remember we run tours every Saturday, cost is $X". That's actually fine for what it is, a blog attached to a business, but hardly inspiring. Ruby's I can see being more successful, but the whole emphasis on the health benefits of particular foods is exactly the sort of thing that annoys me... "This recipe uses ingredient X, which is packed full of antioxidants and vitamin whatever". Plus, her recipes didn't sound great, and I'm someone who eats mostly vegan, so I was looking forward to them. She seems to be the kind of vegan cook who takes regular meat- and dairy-based recipes and looks for ways to substitute the meat and dairy. I tend to prefer recipes that are naturally vegan, myself. That's just taste though; like I said, I could see her blog being pretty successful. The other two... hmm, nah.

The other thing that annoyed me was the whole attitude they had to the people who read their blogs. I'm not sure I can quite articulate it, but it was a bit like they're celebrities and the blog readers are their fans. It's that sort of condescending attitude. There was a thing near the end when they're all together when they decide they need to take a picture for their "backbloggers". It's sort of Hello magazine, and their readers are assumed to be desperate to live their lives vicariously through them. I think I might be being a bit harsh with this, but I didn't like it.

MY GRADE: A C-. Only Ruby saves it from a D.

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It Happened One Wedding, by Julie James

TITLE: It Happened One Wedding
AUTHOR: Julie James

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 304
PUBLISHER: Jove

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

SHE KNOWS BETTER THAN TO SAY “I DO”

After a humiliating end to her engagement, investment banker Sidney Sinclair is done with commitment-phobic men. But when her sister winds up engaged after a whirlwind courtship, Sidney is thrown into close contact with exactly the kind of sexy playboy she wants to avoid—the gorgeous best man. She’s stuck with him, for better or worse, until her sister walks down the aisle, but that doesn’t mean she has to give in to his smooth advances, no matter how tempting they are…

BUT HE MAKES IT HARD TO SAY “I DON’T”

Special agent Vaughn Roberts always gets his man on the job and his woman in bed. So Sidney’s refusal to fall for his charms only makes him more determined to win over the cool and confident redhead. Only what starts out as a battle of wills ends up as a serious play for her heart. Because the one woman who refuses to be caught may be the only one Vaughn can’t live without...

Sidney Sinclair has just come out of a relationship with a man she thought was 'the one', but who turned out to be a cheating bastard. She's very clear that she's ready for marriage and starting a family, so she's pretty dismayed that she's just lost years with this guy and has to start again. She's definitely not intending to waste any time with men who're not in the same place she is.

When Vaughan Roberts approaches her and tries to chat her up in a coffee shop, it's obvious to her he's one such time-waster. She makes it crystal-clear to him she's not interested, and exactly why. But it turns out that Vaughan's brother is getting married to Sidney's sister. In fact, that's why they were both in the same coffee shop; their siblings wanted to introduce the best man and maid of honour to each other. Before long, the proximity makes it difficult to resist the attraction.

The last couple of Julie James books have seen me falling a little bit out of love with her work. I still enjoy the books. I like her competent, professional heroines who feel much more modern than many romance heroines. I like the character-driven plots. I like the writing. All that said, the books are not resonating with me as they used to.

That was the case here. You can take it as read that all the usual stuff I like about this author's books was there. I did enjoy it. However, there were several niggles.

One of the main issues was that I found Sidney less interesting than I usually find James' heroines. She felt too perfect. There's work. Yes, I really appreciate James showing us women who are very good at high-powered careers, are confident in their own competence (and with good reason) and have no issues going for what they want at work. But usually James does more with their work. She'll look at issues of work-life balance, have her heroines deal with a little bit of adversity, something. For Sidney, her worklife is perfect. Period. She's a director at a private equity firm, she loves the work and has no issues at all with work-life balance. She's preternaturally good at what she does, to the point that she's almost fool-hardy in her confidence in her investment choices (but of course, that all works out exactly as planned, so she was 100% right). She's just as perfect on the personal front. She wants to meet a man to settle down with, she comes up with a list of criteria, she applies it and it works exactly as intended. She doesn't need to do anything, just wait for Vaughn to realise that he does fit the first of those criteria and does want to commit.

I guess I also didn't quite get why there was this vibe that Vaughn was doing something wrong with his life before he turned into Sidney's dream man. So he doesn't want to settle down; what's wrong with that? He's honest about it and doesn't jerk women around. But the vibe is that he must be made to realise the error of his ways.

The other issue I had was that everyone here is very affluent and there doesn't seem to be any awareness of their own privilege. I would appreciate some acknowledgment of this. I think the problem is that I've always identified a quite bit with James' heroines, so as I change (I've said it before, I'm doing the opposite of what conventional wisdom would predict and becoming more and more left-wing as I grow older), I feel annoyed at characters who feel like me some years ago.

MY GRADE: I'm still mostly enjoying these books, but a little bit less than I used to. A B-.

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The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

TITLE: The God of Small Things
AUTHOR: Arundhati Roy

COPYRIGHT: 1997
PAGES: 333
PUBLISHER: Random House

SETTING: India in the 1960s and 1990s
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

More magical than Mistry, more of a rollicking good read than Rushdie, more nerve-tinglingly imagined than Naipaul, here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy has written an astonishingly rich, fertile novel, teeming with life, colour, heart-stopping language, wry comedy and a hint of magical realism.

Set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala, Southern India, The God of Small Things tells the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel. Amongst the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother's factory, they try to craft a childhood for themselves amidst what constitutes their family - their lonely, lovely mother, their beloved Uncle Chacko (pickle baron, radical Marxist and bottom-pincher) and their avowed enemy Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grand-aunt).

This is one of those reviews where I have to make sure I mention my ratings are purely based on my enjoyment of the book in question. Because this is not a bad book. I wouldn't even contradict those who say it's great. It's just that it was spectacularly not to my taste.

This is the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel, who live in Kerala, in Southern India. Most of it is set in the late 60s, although sections are set later, when the twins are grown. From the later sections we know there's something awful that is going to happen, and after a while we even know what that something is. But the tension ratchets up and up until we actually see it happen.

My problem was that I absolutely hated every minute I was reading this. Pretty much all of the characters (except for the good and honourable unfortunate the awful thing happens to), are vile. And the book wallows in the vileness of people. This goes from big, life-changing evil to mundane, every-day nastiness, which can make just as big an impression. In fact, my most hated character was the twins' great-aunt, Baby Kochamma, a spiteful, repellent character whose evil is mostly of the domestic kind.

Roy creates some really vivid imagery, but loves to juxtapose the richness and colour with the disgusting... her images pause on the pus of the infected diabetic boil, the vomit, the saliva strings as dentures are pulled out of a mouth. It's effective, but that just meant that I spent all the book with my stomach turning.

She also has a clever way with her writing, but she goes overboard with her little trick of making two words come together to create a new one. She plays with words in a way that I should have liked, but I was so annoyed and sickened by all the other stuff going on that it felt annoying instead. On and on and on she went and the writing just pushed me away.

I felt like a bad reader for not liking this, but what can I say, if I didn't, I didn't!

MY GRADE: It was a D for me.

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Me Before You, by Jojo Moyes

TITLE: Me Before You
AUTHOR: Jojo Moyes

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 482
PUBLISHER: Penguin

SETTING: Contemporary UK
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: There is a sequel

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

I read this one quite a while ago and wrote a bit of a brain-dump on my reactions to it, meaning to work it up into a proper review. I never did, but a sequel has come out and I'm planning to read it, so I've come back to it.

Me Before You wasn't what I expected. It comes dressed in chick lit clothes, so I expected comedy and an HEA ending. I got the comedy, but since readers of this blog are mainly romance readers, they'll probably appreciate knowing that I didn't get that HEA. However, I got the right ending for this particular story, in my opinion, and I explain why below after the spoiler space.

The book's main narrator is Louisa Clark, a regular young woman from a regular working class family who takes a job as a carer for a quadraplegic man. Will Traynor used to have an extremely privileged life: plenty of money, a satisfying job and lots of friends to travel and do extreme sports with. He still has the plenty of money, but after his accident, all that he loved about his life disappeared. It's been quite a while, but he still hasn't got to the stage of accepting his new circumstances and wanting to build a new life, so his mother is very worried. Luisa, who refuses to kowtow to Will or treat him like some tragic object of pity, seems like just the right person to help him find some joy in life.

And to an extent, it works. Lou and Will come to care about each other and they develop a relationship that improves both their lives. But Will is very certain about certain things, and Lou is determined to change his mind.

And on that cryptic note, I'll stop with the plot summary. Before I explain it better below, I should say I felt this book was very emotional, but in an honest, completely non-manipulative and non-maudlin way. There was a point when I discovered the big spoiler thing and I thought "Oh, shit, she's going to go all Jodi Picoult", but I was wrong. To me this did not feel at all exploitative. It's also an extremely funny book, which works wonderfully because it makes the very sad elements feel more bearable. With the subject matter it could have been very difficult  to read through, but the humour makes it easier to read and does not make it any less powerful.

So yes, I really liked it, and if this sounds good and you prefer no spoilers (well, beyond what I've already said about no HEA), stop reading now and go buy it. Because I'm now going to go into serious spoiler territory.

S

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Ok, so, the big thing I didn't want to mention above is that after a while, it becomes clear that what this book is actually about is the right to die. Will has decided that life as a quadraplegic person is not a life he wants, and he intends to travel to an assisted dying clinic. During the book he and Lou fall in love and he becomes a lot happier, but he does not change his mind. None of the tactics Lou comes up with to convince him work. In the end, he goes through with it, with Lou by his side.

It's obvious that this is potentially problematic, and it's probably why I've taken so long to write this review. It takes quite a while to process. I think with a book like this whether it works for you or not will depend on whether you feel the author is saying something about all people with a particular characteristic, rather than simply talking about a particular character. Is she saying being quadriplegic is so awful that death is preferable to even life with someone who loves you?

The reason I liked this was because I didn't think she was saying that at all, although I accept that other readers may interpret it very differently. Moyes makes a point of showing that plenty of people in Will's same circumstances have happy, fulfilling lives. A big part of Lou's efforts are about that. She begs Will to talk to people who have similar conditions, people she's been in touch with (and whose experiences we readers have been privy to, through their postings online and emails to Lou) and who are happy. Will's response is that he's sure they are happy, but this is his decision, and he, Will, wants this. I chose to take this at face value and accept that this was what Moyes was saying, nothing more, particularly because this made sense given Will's characterisation.

And in the end, I thought the ending, where he does go through with his plans, was the right one. Once the situation had been set up, I think I would have been even less happy with an ending where Will's choices had been taken away because other people thought he should want something different, or even one where he'd changed his mind because he'd realised they were right. I think I would have found that infantilising. Will is not less, he's not someone whose decisions should be made for him, and I would have felt that people arguing that he wasn't in his right mind and wasn't able to make decisions would have been a lie. Will has a very good idea of what his life will look like. He knows Lou loves him and he loves her and that they can have a very satisfying relationship. He's not in a situation where he only sees a hopeless future. He knows exactly what he's rejecting, and he has every right to reject it, if he so wants. To me, keeping him from doing so would mean saying that because he has lost much of his control over his physical body he therefore must lose control over his life, and I don't think that would be right.

So, it worked for me, but this is very definitely a YMMV book.

MY GRADE: An A-.

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Unfinished opera singers and mathematicians

TITLE: The Queen of the Night
AUTHOR: Alexander Chee

Ah, this book. It sounded great. The world of opera in 1870s Paris. A heroine who's the most famous soprano of her time and has a mysterious past. An intriguing plot, in which our heroine, Lilliet, is offered every singer's ambition: a role written specifically for her, only it turns out to be based on her own past, which very few people know.

I tried. I really did! I read over 100 pages of it before giving up. I liked some aspects of it: the setting is lovingly and lusciously described, and the plot was as interesting as promised. However, you really need characters that make sense. Lilliet is paper-thin. By the time I stopped reading I knew a lot about what had happened to her in the past, but I knew nothing about her as a person. I didn't understand why she'd react in the ways I was told she'd reacted and didn't know why I should care about what happened to her. The other characters were just as sketchily drawn, but I could have lived with that, if Lilliet had felt more real. I wasn't crazy about the writing, either. It felt a bit pretentious and it also felt like it worked to distance the reader from the characters.

I picked this one up mainly due to raves in a bookish podcast I really like, called All The Books! I love the enthusiasm of the two presenters and they've sold me on quite a few books already. However, I don't think I've actually liked any of them, so I guess I need to accept these two people and I just have very different tastes. Too bad.

MY GRADE: A DNF.



TITLE: Sweet Deception
AUTHOR: Heather Snow

This was yet another failed attempt at getting back into historical romance. I'd liked a previous Heather Snow title well enough before, so I picked this one up next. The plot concerns Derick Aveline, an English nobleman who's been working as a spy during the Napoleonic Wars. His last mission before he returns to civilian life is to catch a traitor operating in the very same area as his country estate. When he gets there he finds himself faced with a murder, and his childhood friend Emma determined to investigate. See, Emma's taken on her magistrate brother's duties since he had a stroke, and she means to keep them.

There's nothing really wrong with this book. The fact that I gave up after 80 pages or so is simply due to me having read way too many books just like this. It felt tired, and many of the tropes were amongst my least favourites. I've had it up to here with gentleman spies. The heroine is still nursing a childhood crush on the hero, and has been more or less pining for him all the time he was away. She's some sort of mathematical genius, but the bit of the book that I read really didn't convince me that she was. I will quite happily read all these elements if the book has other things going for it or if the author is doing something novel or interesting with them, but that just wasn't the case here. I didn't buy the characters or the situation, and it felt very "only in a romance novel".

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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April 2016 wish list

Not a lot of books next month. Either that or I need to find new places to look at for new releases.


Books I'm definitely planning to get


Fellside, by M.R. Carey (Apr 5)

I loved Carey's previous book, The Girl With All the Gifts. I've no idea if this one is set in the same world (from the description it doesn't sound like it is, but it's a bit cryptic), but I don't really care. I don't think I'll be reading any reviews and I look forward to discovering what it's about.





The Obsession, by Nora Roberts (Apr 12)

I'm still liking Nora Roberts' single title romantic suspense a little bit more than her latest trilogies, so I'll be giving this one a try. The plot sounds a little bit like The Witness, which I loved (actually, it was probably the last one I properly liked!).





'Til Death Do Us Part, by Amanda Quick (Apr 19)

Kind of us above. It's been a while since I've really enjoyed one of this author's books, but I'm still reading them and hoping for the best.




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


Lost Among the Living, by Simone St. James (Apr 5)

I really love the sound of St. James' 1920s-set, atmospheric and chilling books. I've got a couple on my TBR, so I'll probably wait till I read those before buying this one, but it sounds good.





The Murder of Mary Russell, by Laurie R. King (Apr 5)

I need to catch up with this series first, so I'm just noting this one (and my *gasp*... "Murder"?? reaction).

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This Rough Magic, by Mary Stewart

TITLE: This Rough Magic
AUTHOR: Mary Stewart

COPYRIGHT: 1964
PAGES: 254
PUBLISHER: William Morrow

SETTING: 1960s Corfu
TYPE: Romantic Suspense
SERIES: None

When Lucy Waring's sister Phyllida suggests that she join her for a quiet holiday on the island of Corfu, young English Lucy is overjoyed. Her work as an actress has temporarily come to a halt. She believes there is no finer place to be "at liberty" than the sun-drenched isle of Corfu, the alleged locale for Shakespeare's The Tempest. Even the suspicious actions of the handsome, arrogant son of a famous actor cannot dampen her enthusiasm for this wonderland in the Ionian Sea.

But the peaceful idyll does not last long. A series of incidents, seemingly unconnected - but all surrounded in mystery - throws Lucy's life into a dangerous spin, as fear, danger and death - as well as romance - supplant the former tranquility. Then a human corpse is carried ashore on the incoming tide... And without warning, she found she had stumbled into a nightmare of strange violence, stalked by shadows of terror and sudden death.

This was a bit of a revelation. I read a few of Mary Stewart's classics about 10 years ago and (with a single exception) liked them a lot. I found them atmospheric and fun, but I didn't quite get why people would absolutely adore these books. Well, I think I do now. Looks like I've finally reached the right point in my life for them, a bit like with the Vorkosigan books.

The setup is Stewart's usual "English heroine having adventures in exotic location". Fledgling actress Lucy Waring is between jobs, after her latest play folded abruptly in London. At loose ends, she accepts her sister's invitation to join her in Corfu for a few weeks. Lucky Lucy, her sister is married to a very rich Italian businessman whose family has had property in Corfu for many generations, so there's a lovely villa in a beautiful seaside location for her to stay in rent-free.

Lucy soon becomes embroiled in the life of the neighbourhood. This, most excitingly, includes the renowned actor Sir Julian Gale, who has been in seclusion after a family tragedy. This seclusion continues in Corfu and is guarded by his stand-offish son Max, whose first interaction with Lucy doesn't go too well. There's also Godfrey Manning, a photographer who's become friends with Lucy's sister, as well as a small group of locals who work for the foreigners. There's Maria, whose husband has been missing for years, presumed stuck in Albania (I didn't quite realise before starting this just how close these two places are). There's her two teenaged children, Spiro and Miranda, named by Sir Julian, who's their godfather. There's also their beautiful friend Adonis, whose name Lucy struggles with until he laughingly suggests she uses the local pronunciation of the name.

Trouble starts with an accidental drowning, closely followed by another one. Both are explainable on their own, but something is not quite right, and Lucy is soon mixed up in some very mysterious goings on.

This was wonderful fun. There's a suspense plot that makes sense and is entertaining. The identity of the villain isn't a huge mystery, but it's not meant to be. It's all in the figuring out of why and of how he can be stopped. I particularly loved that Lucy is an active, sensible participant in this investigation, and she's extremely brave. That said, the ending wasn't perfect. The final confrontation was fine, but felt a little bit anticlimactic, because Stewart had been building and building and building the tension, leading me to expect a magnificent, dramatic 'boom' moment, but it didn't quite deliver. Still, it worked perfectly fine.

There's a lovely bit of romance. No romance reader can look at my description and fail to guess that Max is going to be the man for Lucy. From that first encounter, I thought at first he was going to be one of those cruel, punishing heroes so popular at the time (really, really not my cup of tea), but he wasn't. He turned out to be much more to my taste than expected. And of course, it helps that Lucy is a strong, capable heroine who doesn't put up with any crap from anyone.

There's also the setting, which was fabulous. The location itself comes alive, but there's also a fair bit of geopolitics and a vivid sense of time and place. This was written in the mid-60s, and the sense of Corfu being at the crossroads of the fight between the West and the communist world is striking. The snowy peaks of Albania loom over much of the action, and I loved that.

Another thing I liked was how the Corfiot characters were important and had a life of their own. The reason I picked this one up now was a comment Susanna Kearsley left on my review of the first book in Nora Roberts' latest trilogy. There I complained that, although the book was set in Corfu, there was not one named Greek character. Susanna suggested This Rough Magic as a sort of antidote, and it definitely was that. Spiro, Miranda, Adonis, Maria and several others were real people, with their own interests apart from the lives of the foreigners. Lucy's narration was a touch condescending on one or two occasions, so it wasn't perfect, although she dealt with them as people, and people she liked and respected. Definitely a lot better than the Nora Roberts book!

I thoroughly enjoyed this. I think I'll be digging up my Mary Stewart collection over the next few months. The only disappointment is that they don't seem to be available as audiobooks. As I was reading This Rough Magic it struck me they would be absolutely perfect in that format. But no, audible only seems to have the Merlin books, and even my library system, which still has a fair few CDs and even cassettes, has nothing. Someone please get on this quick!

MY GRADE: An A-.

PS - I have said nothing about the dolphin! I loved the dolphin! :)

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The Story of Alice, by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

TITLE: The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and The Secret History of Wonderland
AUTHOR: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

COPYRIGHT: 2015
PAGES: 497
PUBLISHER: Vintage

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Non-Fiction
SERIES: None

This is the secret history of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Wonderland is part of our cultural heritage. But beneath the fairy tale lies the complex history of the author and his subject. Charles Dodgson was a quiet academic but his second self, Lewis Carroll, was a storyteller, innovator and avid collector of ‘child-friends’. Carroll’s imagination was to give Alice Liddell, his 'dream-child', a fictional alter ego that would never let her grow up.

This is a biography that beautifully unravels the magic of Alice. It is a history of love and loss, innocence and ambiguity. It is the story of one man’s need to make a Wonderland in a changing world.

I read (or attempted to read) this for my book club. We wanted to choose a biography and the shortlists for the Costa Book Awards had just come out, so we picked one from there. This one sounded interesting to most people, so we went with it.

As the title indicates, this is the story of Alice in Wonderland. It's the story of the book, but also of its author and of the girl that inspired it.

I did not get on with it at all and neither did my fellow book clubers... so much so that we had to cancel the meeting because there really wasn't a quorum.

My main problem was that I found the author's style incredibly annoying. I felt he read much too much into the most minor details. He would draw really fanciful conclusions that weren't reasonable or plausible. Even worse: he would present them in an overly assured way. It's hard to convey just how preposterous it all was, so probably best to let Douglas-Fairhurst himself do the work for me. I'll give you just a couple of random examples, but I can assure you, there are bits like this in practically every page.

Speculating about why Carroll zeroed in so much on Alice Lidell (the young girl, daughter of the college's Dean, to whom Carroll told the proto version of the story):

"...in any case there were plenty of other things about Alice that Carroll would have found attractive. She was born on 4 May 1852, a year which happened to fall exactly halfway between the first recorded uses of ‘nonsense poetry’ (1851) and the adjective ‘no-nonsense’ (1853), and if the close conjunction of those phrases neatly sums up a much larger struggle in the Victorian imagination, between a sensible but rather straitened approach to life and a much zanier alternative, it also hints at the mixture of qualities in Carroll’s potential new friend."

I'm sorry, but WTF? He goes on later in that section:

"Clearly Alice Liddell’s personality was a significant attraction, as was her proximity in Christ Church, which made her friendship convenient as well as genuinely enticing. [OK, that kind of makes sense...] But another and much simpler reason may have been her name.

Some years later Carroll invented the word game Doublets, in which players were supposed to turn one word into another, making the dead live (DEAD, lead, lend, lent, lint, line, LIVE) or mice rats (MICE, mite, mate, mats, RATS). Transforming ALICE LIDDELL into LEWIS CARROLL, or performing the same trick the other way round, is impossible without falling into gobbledygook, although meeting someone whose name had the same shape may still have appealed to a writer who only a few weeks earlier had published ‘Solitude’."

Huh? Do you see why I found myself so annoyed by this crap?

I was also uncomfortable with how the author dealt with the controversial issue here, which is the nature of Carroll's relationship with Alice Lidell. He was clearly drawn to children, especially young, pre-pubescent girls, to an extent which is very disturbing and creepy to the modern reader. People seem to take all sorts of positions on the issue, from thinking it was all innocent and simply a product of a man who was a bit socially awkward, to assuming full-blown paedophilia (interpretations closer to the latter end of the spectrum seem supported by the fact that Carroll's family members cut out and destroyed several pages of his diary which seem clearly to be about the relationship in question). I have no idea where on this spectrum I am, mainly due to ignorance of the subject, and this book didn't particularly help dispel that. Douglas-Fairhurst seems to mostly be on the "innocent" part of the spectrum, but rather than convince me, the way he would twist himself into knots trying to argue this made me suspicious.

In this section, he speculates on something Alice's sister Ina says about a time when Carroll distanced himself from the Lidells:

"Looking back on events in 1930, Ina told Alice that the biographer Florence Becker Lennon had asked her why Carroll stopped coming to the Deanery. ‘I think she tried to see if Mr. Dodgson ever wanted to marry you!!’ Ina wrote, with a double exclamation mark that perhaps indicated how ridiculous the idea was, or alternatively how close Lennon had come to stumbling upon the truth. Her next letter to her sister was equally ambiguous. ‘I said his manner became too affectionate to you as you grew older and that mother spoke to him about it,’ she explained, ‘and that offended him so he ceased coming to visit us again, as one had to find some reason for all intercourse ceasing.’ But this could indicate either that ‘his manner became too affectionate towards you’ (i.e. he behaved inappropriately), or ‘his manner became too affectionate towards you’ (i.e. I was jealous of the attention you were getting, or glad that you were attracting it rather than me). Even her final comment that ‘Mr. Dodgson used to take you on his knee. I know I did not say that!’ is not straightforward. Was she reminding Alice of a childhood secret they had shared, or complaining that Lennon had tried to put words into her mouth?"

Sorry, but what about "as you grew older" bit on the accusation that Carroll's manner towards Alice became too affectionate? That seems obvious that it wasn't the second interpretation.

And then there's this:

"Mrs Liddell might have been even more nervous if she had read Carroll’s diary entry after his final boat trip with her daughters: ‘A pleasant expedition,’ he wrote, ‘with a very pleasant conclusion.’ Was this a kiss? And if so, was it a ceremony conducted with the chaste solemnity of the Dodo giving Alice a thimble, or was it just a spontaneous muddle of mouths?"

This bit combines all I disliked about this book. How the hell do you go from Carroll saying the expedition had a "pleasant conclusion" to interpreting this means that the conclusion involved a kiss? And "spontaneous muddle of mouths"? Euwwww!! This is a little girl we're talking about!

I pushed through almost to the halfway point, but when it became clear there wasn't going to be much of a discussion at book club, I gave up.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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Alice in Italy

TITLE: Wonderment In Death (from Down the Rabbit Hole anthology)
AUTHOR: JD Robb

I decided to read this while I was struggling with a Lewis Carroll biography for my book club (probably not a coincidence). Eve investigates an apparent murder-suicide, which we readers know was orchestrated by a killer using mind-control techniques and more than a few drugs. Eve looks under the surface and realises something else was going on, and that whoever was responsible has a bit of an obsession with Alice in Wonderland.

This was ok. The Alice connections were fun, and it was a nice glimpse of the characters we know and love. Unfortunately, this short story suffered from the same issue as the previous ones, and that is that paranormal stuff does exist in the world of the short stories, but this doesn't translate into the world of the novels. That feels just wrong.

This short story comes in an anthology with three others, but I didn't read any of those. I've tried the authors before and they don't work for me at all. No point wasting my time. I do wish I'd known that if I waited a while I'd be able to purchase just the Robb story in e!

MY GRADE: A B-.

TITLE: The Dark Heart of Italy
AUTHOR: Tobias Jones

The Dark Heart of Italy is about the country Jones discovered when he moved there in the late 90s. He looks beyond the glamorous, beautiful façade the tourist will see. What Jones is interested in is what life is really like in Italy for those who live there. He covers a wide range of topics, and this is basically a collection of essays, each very different in both tone and content. Jones has added a final paragraph to each of them that that links it to the next one, but that often feels a bit shoehorned in.

I enjoyed most of this. It didn't start great: a couple of chapters at the beginning were about the anni di piombo, or "years of lead", the period when the struggle between the fascists and the left got really heated, to the point of terrorist attacks and atempted coups. Those should have been really interesting, but the way they were written, with much too much detail on the legal proceedings, made them stultifying. Other chapters were much better. Those tended to be the ones where he looked into the way Italians are and tries to understand it. Particular favourites were the chapters on Italian football, television and Catholicism. Those felt pretty insightful.

The title suggests something the book is not... well, not really. He does look at the dark and ugly, but he clearly loves the country and its people, and that shines through. The tone is often not of aggressive criticism, more of bemused fondness.

MY GRADE: A B.

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The Others series (books 1-3), by Anne Bishop

Anne Bishop's most recent series is set in an alternate version of our reality, one in which humans share the planet with beings they call The Others and who call themselves the Terra Indigene. We discover some of the many different varieties of Terra Indigene through the series, and there are many, but in general they are beings of great power and much closer to nature than humans. Some of them can shapeshift into human forms, and this is how they interact with the species they see as greedy and invasive and troublesome.

Humans developed in parts of the continent which in this universe would be roughly equivalent to Europe (I think!). A few centuries before the start of these books they evolved technology to the point where they could travel across the ocean to what would correspond to our North America, which was where they encountered the Others. The first few colonies they tried to establish were easily wiped out by the Terra Indigene, who had no intention of sharing their land with them. However, later wannabe settlers were able to negotiate an agreement. The Terra Indigene found some of the technologies the humans had had to develop to compensate for their lack of power and lack of connection with nature quite useful, so they traded. In exchange for providing the Terra Indigene with their clever inventions, humans would be allowed areas to settle in and establish cities and towns, as well as access to food and raw materials they could trade for.

Over the centuries, this arrangement has worked, albeit with many tensions. Neither side trusts the other, and they don't really interact much, so each side knows very little about the other. This despite the existence of "Courtyards" inside every city, enclaves where Terra Indigene live and keep an eye on humans to police the agreements between the two sides.

The books centre around precisely one of those Courtyards, that in the city of Lakeside, where a woman called Meg Corbyn finds refuge. Meg is human, but a very special kind of human. She is a blood prophet, which means she sees extremely accurate visions when her skin is cut. These visions can be directed through questioning, which makes them very useful. Meg grew up a prisoner in a place where many of her kind were kept under close control and their prophetic abilities sold to the highest bidder. Want to know what the biggest risk to your business is in the next few months? Pay for a cut to be made to a blood prophet's skin and the right question to be asked.

Meg was able to escape, however, and made it to the city of Lakeside, where she ended up in the Courtyard. Fortunately for her, this particular courtyard is a pretty special one, one where the Terra Indigene have set out to learn more about humans. To do this they have opened a few businesses where humans are allowed to come in, and Meg ends up being hired as Human Liaison / mail clerk, and adopted by the Terra Indigene, who see her as different from the other horrid humans.

Now, usually I would write a separate review for each of these books, but having read the first three now, that didn't seem particularly necessary. It's true that each book has its own plot, to an extent. The first one has "The Controller", the guy in charge of the institution from which Meg escaped, trying to find her and bring her back. The next two are more focused on the bigger-picture tensions between the Terra Indigene and humans: in book 2 the danger is a kind of drug created to target the Terra Indigene, in the third it's a human-supremacist group trying to fan hatred. However, for all that each book has some closure for these plots, the broader story feels like it continues through all three books.

There's Meg's efforts to understand her powers and how they work and to keep them from destroying her. The way the whole blood prophecy thing works is a bit more complex than I described earlier. Cuts generate euphoria, so cutting becomes addictive. Many a blood prophet has lost her mind after a few years (the general consensus seems to be that prophets get a thousand cuts before their minds go). That's obviously not a great prospect to look forward to, and throughout the series Meg, with the help of the Terra Indigene and the "human pack" she develops in the Courtyard, learns more about what she can do and how to do it safely.

There's also Meg's adaptation to the outside world, which is a major feature in book 1 but continues in later books as well. Blood prophets are kept isolated from the real world, learning about it only through image albums which help them put their prophecies into words. When they leave that controlled environment (and as the series develops, many more do), the real world overwhelms them. So Meg must learn how to function without breaking down and how to help others do so.

And of course, there's Meg's relationship with Simon Wolfgard (and I'm surprised at myself that I haven't mentioned him earlier in this post, as Simon and Meg are basically the main characters in the series, even if they're not the only POV characters!). Simon is a Wolf, and he owns the Courtyard's book shop, into which Meg stumbles that first day. There's something about Meg that doesn't trigger Simon's usual distaste for humans, and they become good friends. Simon is very much not a human, no matter how much he looks like one when in his human shape, so their relationship doesn't follow human patterns, and is as much a learning experience for him as it is for Meg. It's also not really (not completely?) a romantic relationship. Well, it's kind of weird, because parts of it feel like one, but not quite. It's hard to describe, and really has to be experienced. It's really interesting, anyway.

And in addition to the character stuff, the big picture developments very much carry through the series, slowly building and changing. The relations between Terra Indigene and humans become worse and worse, something that our protagonists try to mitigate through the deepening relationships between the inhabitants of the Courtyard and an increasing cast of humans who see that if humanity tries to go head to head with the Others, they're basically screwed.

So I've written a bit of a treatise here, but not very much about what I think of the series, really! Do I like it? Well, yes, but. None of the elements work perfectly, and there are (many, many) flaws and things I find annoying. But I still find this addictive. Basically, I find this world and these people absorbing and fascinating and weirdly comforting to read about. Bishop's got the sort of writing style that makes you sink into a story. It really is strange. A big part of book 1, particularly, is spent following Meg around as she basically learns how to live a normal life. That means a lot of time spent with her sorting mail. And I loved it.

The world I find pretty much as intriguing as I find it disturbing. For starters, I'm not sure if I should read the Terra Indegene as Native North Americans. If I do, it's disturbing because it feels uncomfortably close to the Magical Indian stereotype. If I don't, then it means the entire existence of Native Americans has been erased, which feels even more disturbing.

I also find myself very bothered by the attitude of the Terra Indigene, especially Simon, to humans. Humans other than Meg are called derogatory names ('monkeys', which feels a bit too close to real world racism towards black people), and basically seen as potential food ('clever meat', they actually call humans). The Terra Indigene are very clear that humans are inferior, and really, it often feels like so does the narrative. Although we're periodically told that there are also some bad Terra Indigene, all the villains in this series are human. The lack of empathy to humans does evolve, though, and in later books Simon and others are much better able to see things from the point of view of humans, at least the ones they like.

Really, though, for all that I enjoyed being in this world, it feels like it doesn't bear deep thinking about it. The actions of the evil humans feel a bit unbelievable, too eeeeevil, and other than our small minority of good humans, the rest are like sheep, either willing to swallow anything or not wanting to get involved (hmm, well....).

The imbalance between the power of humans and the Terre Indigene is interesting. At first sight, it shouldn't work. Bishop has made her Terre Indigene so powerful that it is obvious this is not a contest humans have a prayer of winning. So how does she even have a plot and generate a sense of danger and tension? Well, part of it is a bit of handwaving. There's a character who becomes important in the second and third books, a motivational speaker who has huge influence on humans and uses it to create hatred against the Others. Considering how casual the Terre Indigene feel about human lives, it doesn't make sense that they don't just send someone to kill him. It would be extremely easy and easily made to look like natural causes. But they don't, and it makes no sense. On the positive side, though, the main tool Bishop uses to create tension is making it clear that the danger of the situation is to humans. The Terra Indigene will be fine (even if a handful of individuals die), it's humanity in general and the group of humans who are the Courtyard's 'human pack' in particular who are in danger. It works.

In terms of the characterisation, there are several annoyances. Meg is portrayed as childishly innocent and this is equated with purity and goodness. And the other thing that annoys me is the weird cutesiness that permeates the series. A lot of these books is pretty dark, what with what's going on in the world and the violence we see first-hand quite often, but this is mixed in with instances of whimsy that don't really fit in well with the characters or the tone. Even the names of the shops in the Courtyard, like Howling Good Reads and A Little Bite (a café). Am I really supposed to believe Simon and Tess (a truly scary being) named them that?

And yet, all this feels minor in terms of my enjoyment. I keep reading and liking, if not every minute, most of them.

MY GRADES:

Written in Red: B+

A Murder of Crows: B

Vision in Silver: B-

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Don't Get Me Wrong, by Marianne Kavanagh

TITLE: Don't Get Me Wrong
AUTHOR: Marianne Kavanagh

COPYRIGHT: 2015
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

SETTING: Contemporary England
TYPE: Chick Lit / Romance
SERIES: None

For fans of Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls, and Sophie Kinsella, here is a Pride and Prejudice for the modern era: Londoners Kim and Harry can’t see eye to eye... until the life of the person they both love most hangs in the balance.

Kim and Harry are total opposites who happen to have the same favorite people in the world: Kim’s older sister, Eva, and her young son, Otis. Kim has never seen what her free-spirited big sister sees in a stuck-up banker like Harry and has spent her childhood trying to keep him out (must he always drive the most ostentatious cars and insist on charming everyone he meets?), while Harry’s favorite occupation is provoking Kim.

Both Harry and Kim are too stuck in their prejudices to care about what’s really going on beneath the surface of each other’s lives. They’ll never understand each other—until the worst of all tragedy strikes. Faced with the possibilities of losing the person they both love most, long-buried secrets come to a head in ways that will change both Harry and Kim forever.

As in her “hilarious, poignant, and profound” (Daily Mail) novel For Once in My Life, Marianne Kavanagh tackles the bonds of family, friendship, and love through sophisticated storytelling. Don’t Get Me Wrong is a witty and heartwarming book that will charm readers everywhere.

Kim adores her older sister Eva, but she can't stand her best friend Harry, who's always hanging around when she wants some sister time. Harry is everything Kim despises: he's smooth and sophisticated and a rich banker, who's able to help Eva in ways Kim just can't. Everything he does seems designed to annoy Kim, and worst of all, he always comes out looking like the kind, reasonable one and she like an irrational shrew.

And then tragedy strikes, and Kim and Harry finally have to communicate.

The idea of this one really appealed to me... well, mostly the marketing did. I love Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls and Sophie Kinsella, and the sort of Pride and Prejudice plot that was promised seemed to be right up my street. It just didn't work. The book was baggy and directionless, and I found myself really, really annoyed by it.

My main problem was that I had issues with the politics of the book. Right from the beginning, Kim spouts opinions on things like vegetarianism, climate change, the value to society of investment bankers that are in essence actually quite close to my own. But Kavanagh makes her shrill and silly and oblivious and rude, not to mention humourless and clearly wrong, which annoyed me. Meanwhile, smug, charming, investment banker toff Harry is all conciliatory and lovely and it’s clear we readers are meant to be on his side.

It turns out the whole book is like that. All the lefties are hypocrites. Well, Kim isn’t, really, but she’s pretty stupid. And her first boyfriend Jake and the whole homeless charity they work for and all their friends through it turn out to be awful, basically spending all their time and effort bigging themselves up and screwing over other people. There is not one character who espouses left-wing political views that is a good person.

Meanwhile, all the investment bankers, from Harry to all his friends, and the one businessman character, are all lovely, sweet people. There’s Harry, who turns out to be practically a saint. There’s his ex girlfriend Titania, who's kind and really sweet. There’s the typical public schoolboy Giles, who turns out to be really decent. There’s Syed, who’s flawed, but like them, is kind and nice and it’s clear Kavanagh is fully on their side. There’s even a random ex colleague of Harry’s Kim meets in Newcastle. All lovely.

The relationship between Kim and Harry did not work for me either, not at all. Kim’s dislike is all based on misunderstandings that could have been cleared up in a 5 minute conversation... actually, they ARE cleared up in a 5 minute conversation, only 8 years too late. It was 8 years’ worth of suffering (really! the whole thing basically makes Kim hugely unhappy every minute she spends with her sister) for nothing. And actually, I had trouble believing that Eva, who knew what was going on, would never sit Kim down for a minute and tell her what was what. Instead, she was all vague and floaty and annoying. I think I was supposed to be oh-so-happy at the end, when they spoke. I was annoyed instead.

I was also particularly annoyed by how Kim was a total pushover with people who were completely awful to her. Her mother is the worst. Every now and then there are sections which are conversations with her mother, but only showing the mother’s part of the dialogue, and they are fucking painful. The woman is over-the-top and unbelievably deluded and selfish. Kim is aware of this, and she does acknowledge it in other conversations, but she never stands up to her. I lost a lot of respect for Kim over this, and there wasn’t much respect left to begin with. And whatever small portion was left after that was lost during her conversations with Jake, which followed the same pattern. Fucking doormat. Except with Harry, of course. She was all prickly with Harry.

Finally, I had some issues with the writing. The POV switches weren't handled very well. They were confusing, particularly the way it was mostly written in third person but often switched for long periods to first-person when portraying Kim thoughts. It was a bit disconcerting. The writing in general was also very unsubtle, and not just when making any sort of social or political point.

Not good!

MY GRADE: A D.

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Die Again, by Tess Gerritsen

TITLE: Die Again
AUTHOR: Tess Gerritsen

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 353
PUBLISHER: Ballantine

SETTING: Contemporary US and Southern Africa
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: 11th in the Rizzoli / Isles series

Detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are back—and they’re going into the wild to find a killer. Die Again is the latest heart-pounding thriller in Tess Gerritsen’s bestselling series, the inspiration behind TNT’s hit show Rizzoli & Isles.

When Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are summoned to a crime scene, they find a killing worthy of the most ferocious beast—right down to the claw marks on the corpse. But only the most sinister human hands could have left renowned big-game hunter and taxidermist Leon Gott gruesomely displayed like the once-proud animals whose heads adorn his walls. Did Gott unwittingly awaken a predator more dangerous than any he’s ever hunted?

Maura fears that this isn’t the killer’s first slaughter, and that it won’t be the last. After linking the crime to a series of unsolved homicides in wilderness areas across the country, she wonders if the answers might actually be found in a remote corner of Africa.

Six years earlier, a group of tourists on safari fell prey to a killer in their midst. Marooned deep in the bush of Botswana, with no means of communication and nothing but a rifle-toting guide for protection, the terrified tourists desperately hoped for rescue before their worst instincts—or the wild animals prowling in the shadows—could tear them apart. But the deadliest predator was already among them, and within a week, he walked away with the blood of all but one of them on his hands.

Now this killer has chosen Boston as his new hunting ground, and Rizzoli and Isles must find a way to lure him out of the shadows and into a cage. Even if it means dangling the bait no hunter can resist: the one victim who got away.

It's become a bit of a tradition of mine to save the latest Rizzoli and Isles novel by Tess Gerritsen to listen to on my early morning walks while on holiday, as soon as I get to Punta del Este. For some strange reason, I find these two experiences the perfect combination.

The book starts out in Botswana, where our narrator, Millie, and her asshat boyfriend are on a week-long photography safari. Millie is not happy. She's not particularly enjoying the experience, and her boyfriend's behaviour (constantly putting her down, flirting with the pretty South African blondes who are part of the expedition) makes it clear their relationship is not going to last very long. She can't wait for it to be over.

And then things get worse: they wake up one morning to find one of their guides dead, apparently eaten by wild animals. Some in the group (read: asshat boyfriend) argue they should continue the trip (the guy is dead anyway, right?). But they can't even do that, because their vehicle won't start. They have no way to communicate with the outside, so all they can do is wait there for a few days, until their pilot alerts the authorities they haven't turned up where expected. And then that night another one of the group is killed, apparently by animals.

The action moves between the travails of the safari group and Boston, where Jane and Maura are investigating the death of a big-game hunter who was found hung on a hook in his own house, just as if he was one of the big animals he himself hunted. And this is not the only suspicious death related to this guy.

This was one of the better books in the series. I was really intrigued by the cases. I couldn't wait to find out was really going on in each of them, but also to find out how they were connected. The bit on the safari was particularly good. Gerritsen managed to create a cast of characters for that section that really came alive and felt real, and more than once I kept thinking about them after I'd finished my walk and had put down my mp3 player. Millie, particularly, was an excellent heroine, and I just couldn't wait to find out what would happen to her and the guide, Johnny. I was really invested in that relationship. I came up with many, many hypotheses, none of which turned out to be right!

The only false step in the suspense came when Gerritsen started bringing in ancient cults and spirit animals and murder rituals and that sort of thing. Fortunately, that's something that turned out not to be a particularly big element, and I was really satisfied with the conclusion of all the different threads. All the solutions fit perfectly, and the killer's motivations, both for the murders and for some of his other actions, made complete sense.

These books also always have some drama going on in our characters' private lives, and just as in the previous book, here we've got quite a bit on the drama between Rizzoli’s mother and asshole father. Now, I was really, really engaged in this in the previous book (see my rant in the previous review). Basically, Frank Rizzoli left his wife Angela for a younger woman. She was devastated but recovered and met a man who treated her well, unlike her chauvinist pig of a husband. But the dog in the manger syndrome kicked in (plus, the other woman got sick of the bastard), and he decided he wanted his wife back, and everything to go back to how it was before. With the help of Jane’s brothers (chauvinist pigs in training) and their Catholic priest, he put the pressure on Angela to take him back. That was the state of affairs on the previous book. We were left hanging without a resolution, and I was looking forward to seeing how it had been resolved when I started this. Well, the whole mess is still going on, and Gerritsen really is dragging it a much too long. I’m tired of the whole sorry mess. She really needs to sort it out soon.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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My Favorite Countess, by Vanessa Kelly

TITLE: My Favorite Countess
AUTHOR: Vanessa Kelly

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Zebra

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 3rd in the Stanton family series

She is difficult, demanding, and at times, quite fierce. And Dr. John Blackmore can't take his eyes off her. The Countess of Randolph is the most striking woman he has ever seen... and the most infuriating patient he has ever tended.

Mired in responsibility, Bathsheba doesn't have time to convalesce in the country. She should be in London, hunting for a wealthy new lover to pay off her late husband's vast debts, not dallying with a devastatingly handsome doctor.

But it is only a matter of time until the good doctor and the obstinate countess will have to contend with the sparks that fly between them. And once their bodies surrender, their hearts may follow...

This was a random pick from my digital TBR (truly random, as in using calibre and a random number generator). I can see why I bought it originally; it's got one of my favourite tropes: the heroine who was the villain in a previous book.

Bathsheba, Countess of Randolph, is in a position that becomes more difficult every day. Since her husband's death the financial situation of the estate, never a good one to start with, keeps getting worse. The new Earl is useless, and now it appears that he might be getting married, and to a woman who does not have much fondness for Bathsheba. Bathsheba's position in society is pretty much based on his good will, so this could quickly become untenable. There's not just Bathsheba herself to consider, but her sister, Rachel, who is in really poor health after a bad fever a few years earlier.

Bathsheba needs to find a rich, society husband, and soon. She's been trying for a while (in fact, the reason why she was the villain in a previous book was because she was trying to blackmail her lover -the hero of that book- into marrying her), but now she needs to get serious. No matter how attractive she finds Dr. John Blackmore and how attractive he finds her, he's not a suitable candidate.

There were some good things here. John is a real, working doctor, and he works in an urban hospital, where he constantly has to struggle with the authorities to be able to provide good treatment to the poorest patients. There is a good sense in the story of the clash between the more conservative establishment, who feel poor people don't deserve their time and that pregnant women should be treated like children, and John and his younger colleagues, who have views much more palatable to the 21st century reader (not sure if those attitudes were realistic, but well). I also liked the way John saw beyond Bathsheba's superficial, bitchy façade and assumed she would care about the sorts of things that he cared about. That was nice.

The book as a whole didn't quite work though. First, it suffers from an artificial conflict. I didn't quite get why John wasn't a suitable candidate for Bathsheba. He's not hugely rich, but it was clear to me that he could have supported Bathsheba and provided her sister with good medical care (especially with him being a doctor!). It's not really explained; it's just kind of self-evident that Bathsheba needs a nobleman. There might have been good reasons for that... she wants to live a life of much more comfortable wealth, she would like the status of being married to a nobleman..., but none of those were established in the narrative as being Bathsheba's motivations. In fact, what we're told is that she wants to be able to take care of her sister, and that this is her main motivation. Every time she would go about how she needed to resist her attraction to John I just kept going "Ehh... why?".

Actually, Bathsheba wasn't a particularly well-realised character at all. In addition to the above, her bitchiness, which is something I'm quite well-disposed to in a heroine, didn't quite work for me. It felt kind of forced, not like what the sort of person we were being told she was would do.

Add to this a final quarter which spent a lot of time on a truly pointless "danger" subplot, and this wasn't a big success for me.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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