Gentle On My Mind, by Susan Fox

TITLE: Gentle On My Mind
AUTHOR: Susan Fox

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 385
PUBLISHER: Zebra

SETTING: Contemporary Canada
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 3rd in the Caribou Crossing series

In her latest contemporary romance, Susan Fox welcomes readers back to Caribou Crossing, the ruggedly sexy Western town that seems made for starting over...

Brooke Kincaid knows second chances don't come cheap. She's spent five years repairing past mistakes and making her life in Caribou Crossing steady and predictable. But now a stranger's Harley has shattered her fence and her peace of mind in one swoop. Brooke is drawn to everything about wounded undercover cop Jake Brannon--his raw masculinity, his tenderness, and the undisguised desire that makes her feel more alive than she's ever been.

By rights, Brooke should curse Jake for complicating her life. Instead she's offered him a place to heal and a cover story as he searches for a wanted man. Jake knows she's vulnerable, but she's also strong, kind, and hotter than hellfire. It's a combination that could make even a die-hard loner long to put up his boots and put down roots at last, and show her just how good a second chance can get...

I loved Susan Fox's Planes, Trains and Automobiles series so much that it placed her on my autobuy list. Her latest work is a small town/modern Western series, which is not usually what appeals to me, but her name on the covers made me pick up the books anyway. They'be been sat in my TBR for a while, until I read Wendy's really intriguing comments on Gentle On My Mind. It's the third book in the series, but why not?

As Wendy says, what's most interesting about this book is the heroine. You certainly don't get many heroines like Brooke in romance novels. She's 43, and as the book opens she's just found out she's going to be a grandmother. This is wonderful news to her, especially since just a few years earlier the idea of being involved in her son's life would have been beyond her wildest dreams.

See, Brooke is a recovering alcoholic. She became an alcoholic while raising her son, Evan, whom she'd had at 15, and coping with a hard-drinking, violent, minor criminal of a husband. She would be the first to admit that she screwed up with Evan, and it wasn't a surprise to her that for many years he would want nothing to do with her.

But in events that happened in book 2 (I think!), Evan came back to Caribou Crossing and evidently reconciled with Brooke. By then Brooke had been sober for some 4 years, after landing in hospital after a car accident and being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The treatment for that was very successful, and spurred her into giving up alcohol as well.

As this book starts, Brooke is almost at the 5 year mark in her sobriety and has put together a satisfying life designed to keep her condition under control. She has a routine she enjoys, which includes things like regular exercise, healthy meals and lots of quality time with her son and his new wife and step-daughter.

And then Jake Brannon crashes his motorcycle into her white picket fence. Jake is a policeman working undercover to expose a drug dealer and grower who's also a murderer. He has received information that the culprit is a pillar-of-society type in Caribou Crossing, where Brooke and her family live, and he's been looking around the area. The reason he crashed into Brooke's fence is that he was running away from bad guys who shot him when he found their marijuana-growing operation, and he lost control of his motorcycle due to the loss of blood.

Jake doesn't start with the right foot with Brooke, as the best approach he can come up with in his half-unconscious state is to threaten to kill her family if she doesn't keep him hidden. But that doesn't last long, and Jake soon takes Brooke into his confidence and reluctantly accepts her help in vouching for him as a long-lost cousin, so he can infiltrate the town properly.

The whole undercover operation plot works mainly as a way to explore the community of Caribou Crossing and Brooke's status in it. After so many years of living there as the town drunk, she still feels uncertain about interacting with people, even though she's been sober for quite a while. Jake, with his outsider's perspective, is able to make her see the respect and true friendship people are offering. I also loved seeing Brooke with her son and his family. She's a bit tentative with him, as well, but you get the feeling that they're going to be fine.

The romance is nice, if not particularly revolutionary. Jake is hot and a motorcycle-riding adrenalin junkie. He won't ever give up undercover work, he tells Brooke, and this makes it obvious to her that there's no future in their relationship. She knows herself, and knows that she wouldn't be able to cope with the fear of knowing he's constantly putting his life in danger. I particularly liked how Fox used the romance as a way of showing us how Brooke had got so much stronger than she'd been a few years earlier. After she and Jake begin their affair she starts worrying, because she mistrusts the strong emotions he's making her feel. She worries that it might be triggering the sort of maniacal states she felt when her bipolar disorder was out of control. So what does she do? Well, in a refreshingly sensible move, she talks to her doctor, who reassures her and helps her start to learn the difference between strong emotions that are healthy and what she was used to feeling when she was ill.

I also loved the way something was dealt with at the end of the book. It's very spoilerish, so all I'll say before the spoiler tags is that an issue comes up that is present in very few romances (even though it happens much more commonly than that in real life), and that I thought the characters' reactions and actions were great. So, moving into spoilers: [start spoiler]Brooke gets pregnant, even though they've been careful. There might be issues with her continuing with her usual lithium doses while pregnant, so she seriously considers having an abortion. Her fears are not portrayed as irrational, and no one assumes this would be the wrong choice for her. Her doctor sets out the options for her and they discuss the risks of each, and Brooke thinks about it. She does decide to continue with the pregnancy, but never thinks abortion would have been wrong, just not the right option for her in that situation. Jake is supportive, too. Brooke writes him a letter when she finds out about her pregnancy, in which she tells him what's happened and that's she's considering a termination. Jake is on an assignment when the letter arrives, so he doesn't get it until much later. He assumes she has now had an abortion and doesn't judge her at all. He goes to see her to give her his support, not to condemn her or to try and stop her in case she's still pregnant.[end spoiler]

A really good book, and I'll definitely be reading the first two soon.

MY GRADE: A strong B+.

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Midwinterblood, by Marcus Sedgwick

TITLE: Midwinterblood
AUTHOR: Marcus Sedgwick

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 272
PUBLISHER: Orion

SETTING: Varies
TYPE: Horror
SERIES: None

Have you ever had the feeling that you've lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar even when you've never been there before, or felt that you've known someone even though you are meeting them for the first time?
In a novel comprising seven short stories each of them influenced by a moon - flower moon, harvest moon, hunter's moon, blood moon - and travelling from 2073 back in time to the dark of the moon and the days of Viking saga, this is the story of Eric and Merle who have loved and lost one another and who have been searching for each other ever since. In the different stories the two appear as lovers, mother and son, brother and sister, artist and child as they come close to finding each other before facing the ultimate sacrifice.

Beautifully imagined, intricately and cleverly structured this is a heart-wrenching and breathtaking paranormal romance, but it also has the hallmark Sedgwick gothic touch with plenty of blood-spilling, a vampire and sacrifice.

Midwinterblood is made up of 7 stories, all set in the remote Northern island of Blessed. We start in 2073, when a journalist called Eric Seven travels there to investigate rumours that there's a flower that islanders cultivate and helps them live forever. There is talk that this is sold at a huge price to the richest people on the planet, very illegally.

One of the first people Eric meets is Merle, a young woman he feels he recognises even though he's never seen her before. The other people he meets are all very helpful in terms of finding him somewhere to stay in this island without hotels and getting him food, but not in terms of answering any questions. Not that Eric is, after a while drinking the islanders' special tea, particularly interested in asking any questions, or even remembering that he meant to ask some.

Things don't end well for Eric and Merle, and as we go back in time in the following stories, we realise their souls have met many times over the centuries, in all sorts of different circumstances. They've been brother and sister, mother and child, old man and young girl. Always on Blessed, always the powerful dragon-shaped flowers playing some sort of role.

I thought the idea of Midwinterblood sounded amazing, but the execution of it wasn't to my taste. None of the stories were particularly interesting of themselves, all having boring characters and plots that just didn't capture my attention. I hoped at least the connections between the stories would end up gelling into something that would make the whole thing worth it, but they didn't. You'd see some things recurring and echoing, but it was all a bit pedestrian.

And then there was the writing style. That didn't work for me at all. It's... well, the best way I can describe it is 'fairy-taleish' and sort of dream-like. It didn't engage me, and in fact, I felt it distanced me from the emotions that were supposed to be evoked by the story. This is supposed to be horror, but it wasn't scary in the least. It wasn't even creepy. You need to care about characters, at least to an extent, before you feel afraid for them, and the people and situations need to feel real before you are afraid for yourself.

MY GRADE: A D.

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Blackout, by Tim Curran

TITLE: Blackout
AUTHOR: Tim Curran

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 234
PUBLISHER: DarkFuse

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Horror
SERIES: None

In the midst of a beautiful summer, in a perfectly American suburban middle-class neighborhood, a faraway evil is lurking, waiting to strike the unsuspecting residents.

First come the flashing lights, then the heavy rains, high winds, and finally a total blackout. But that's only the beginning...

When the whipping black tentacles fall from the sky and begin snatching people at random, the denizens of Piccamore Way must discover the terrifying truth of what these beings have planned for the human race.

I read this just after Hallowe'en, when I fancied reading something scary. Blackout started well on that front, but the scariness didn't carry all the way through.

Our narrator, Jon, and his wife live in a typical suburban American street. It's summer, and they and their neighbours have had a huge barbeque. Jon's had a bit too much to eat and drink, so he falls asleep on the sofa. When he wakes up everything is dark except for the strangely regular and much too frequent lightning, and his wife is not in the house. The neighbours are soon roused and helping with the search, until it becomes awfully clear that something big is going on. The tentacles falling from the sky and snatching people up are a bit of a clue.

Like I said, this started out great. The first part, with Jon and his neighbours not knowing what's going on and going round in the darkness, trying to get help and figure things out, worked perfectly for me. Curran creates a really effective creepy atmosphere and it felt believable. I had no problem buying that even if your gut is telling you that something is just WRONG, your response to your wife going missing is going to be to do what you're supposed to do: organise a search, try to get to the police, and so on.

Once it becomes clear(ish) that what's going on is an alien attack, however, things concentrate more on the action, and that's just a bit humdrum. I mean, there's a lot going on, a lot of excitement, but I found it hard to care much and I certainly didn't feel scared (even though I was reading this in a mountain lodge in the middle of nowhere). Maybe it was that the characters were too undeveloped for me to care what happened to them. We get to know Jon a bit, but after the first sections, I wasn't quite feeling his reactions. It all felt a bit cold an unemotional. The resolution was cool in an intellectual way, but I get the impression I should have been feeling horror and despair. I didn't. I just closed the book and went to sleep.

So, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't great.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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The Fall, by Kate Sherwood

TITLE: The Fall
AUTHOR: Kate Sherwood

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 214
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

SETTING: Contemporary Canada
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: There's a follow-up

Every relationship leaves something behind. Dumped by his sugar daddy, part-time model Scott Mackenzie somehow ends up owning an abandoned church in rural Ontario. He dreams of using it for gay weddings, even if he’ll never have one of his own.

Joe Sutton is trying to keep his family together after his parents’ deaths. Between the family ranch, his brother’s construction company, and commitments around town, he doesn’t have time for a relationship. But Mackenzie is hard to ignore.

As both men fight their growing attraction, challenges to Mackenzie’s business threaten their relationship. If he can’t make it work, he’ll have to crawl back to the city in defeat. But the only solution involves risking the ranch Joe loves, and each man has to decide how much he’ll sacrifice for the other.

Mackenzie (his first name is Scott, but he goes by his last name) has spent the last few years in a relationship with an older, much richer man. In exchange for being the perfect boyfriend, always considerate of his man's needs and not of his own, always at his beck and call, Mackenzie got security and a very comfy lifestyle.

And then the older boyfriend decides Mackenzie's getting too old for a boy-toy, and should be replaced by a younger model. Now all Mackenzie has left is a small nest egg and a run-down, deconsecrated old church in rural Ontario. The plan when he bought it was to turn it into a venue for gay weddings, which with the ex's money and connections, would have been a nice hobby. Mackenzie is determined to make it work anyway.

Joe Sutton meets Mackenzie when he accompanies his twin brother Will to have a look around the church. Joe mainly takes care of the family ranch, but he sometimes helps Will in his contracting business. He finds Mackenzie really attractive (not that he shows it), but he has a lot on his plate. Work is really busy, but there are also loads of family responsibilities. He and Will raised their younger siblings after the death of their parents, and the whole family are now raising the 4-year-old son of the younger brother, who was too young to do it himself.

But of course, this wouldn't be a romance if temptation didn't get to be too much for Joe, and what starts as casual turns more serious as the two men start liking and depending on each other more and more.

I picked this one up after adoring Sherwood's Mark of Cain. While The Fall doesn't have the angsty plot of Mark of Cain, it has a lot of what I liked about it. There's the romance that is about much more than good sex, there's the sense of community and characters who are dealing with much more than what's going on in their love lives.

I'm a sucker for well-done, real-feeling family drama. I particularly like it when what we've got is real tensions and conflicts that arise in a loving family, who continue to love each other even when they are driving each other crazy and might momentarily not like each other very much. This is what we get here. It's people acting like real people, not like evil cartoonish villains, and the tension was much better for it. I loved all those scenes with Joe's family, and I loved seeing Mackenzie fitting in with them at the end. And I particularly loved little Austin, the 4-year-old nephew being brought up by the whole family. I haven't got a maternal bone in my body, but he is truly adorable. I don't know if he's realistic (I suspect not, he's always really good), but I don't care, because he's so sweet in a completely non-saccharine, non-sickening way.

I liked the romance. It wasn't perfect, mainly because Joe's issues behind his reluctance to get involved with Mackenzie don't feel as clearly understandable as they could have been, but that was a relatively small issue. What I loved best was Mackenzie's character arc. I loved that this was not about him finding another protector, but about him coming into his own and meeting the über-competent Joe on his own terms.

This was a really good one. There's apparently a sequel, continuing Joe and Mack's story, but I don't know if I'll go for it. I liked where this stopped. It felt like a wonderful ending to me, and I'm always reluctant to take the risk of ruining that. But then, that's how I felt about the In Death books (it took me years to go beyond Naked in Death), so I'm well aware the pay-off can be great.

MY GRADE: A strong B+.

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Appointment With Death, by Agatha Christie

TITLE: Appointment With Death
AUTHOR: Agatha Christie

COPYRIGHT: 1938
PAGES: 256
PUBLISHER: William Morrow

SETTING: 1930s Jordan
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: An Hercule Poirot mystery

A tyrannical old martinet, a mental sadist and the incarnation of evil. These were only three of the character descriptions levelled at Mrs. Boynton, the matriarch who kept her family totally dependent on her. But did she really deserve to die on the excursion to beautiful Petra? Hercule Poirot hears about the murder and feels compelled to investigate-despite the family's request not to do so. Do they have something to hide and, if so, can they keep it hidden from this master sleuth?

I chose this one as my next Christie when I realised part of it is set in Jordan. After my visit last year, I find myself fascinated by the place.

The plot centres around a very disfunctional family, the Boyntons. Old Mr. Boynton passed away years ago and left control of the family finances to his second wife. Since then, she has kept an iron grip on both the finances and the family members themselves. There are two sons and a daughter from Mr. Boynton's first marriage, as well as a daughter of his and the second Mrs. Boynton. All four are seemingly in thrall to the woman and unable to break free of her domination. The eldest son is married, and his wife is desperate for them to move away from her influence, but he can't manage it.

And then, on a family trip to Petra, Mrs. Boynton dies. It looks like an accident, but Hercule Poirot is also on holiday in the area, and he suspects someone in her family finally had enough of her psychological torture. Because when he first met the Boyntons in Jerusalem, he overheard one of them say to another: “You see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?”.

I had a bit of an issue with this one, which I'm not sure I would have had if I'd read it at the time it came out. No matter how much I tried to rationalise it (it's the 1930s and the economy is awful, Mrs. Boynton made sure none of the children got a useful education, why should they walk away from the fortune that should belong to them by rights?), I just couldn't buy that these people would not have had enough long before. It would have been more believable if Christie had written them as brainwashed or otherwise psychologically damaged, but as soon as Mrs. Boynton dies, they're all perfectly fine. Plus, the old woman herself didn't seem to be as monstrous as we're told she is... as the blurb puts it: "a mental sadist and the incarnation of evil". She's pretty horrid, but in a much more normal way.

The mechanics of the plot are fun, though. There are some good red herrings, and Poirot is on form. Also, I particularly enjoyed the setting. It's not a travelogue, but quite a good picture emerges of what Jordan would have been like at the time.

Not Christie's best, but a good read, nonetheless.

MY GRADE: A B-.

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Taken In Death, by JD Robb

TITLE: Taken In Death (originally in Mirror, Mirror anthology)
AUTHOR: JD Robb

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 100
PUBLISHER: Jove

SETTING: Mid 21st century New York
TYPE: Mystery/suspense
SERIES: Part of the In Death series, comes after book #39, Thankless in Death

The evil witch killed Darcia. Henry knew it because he'd seen Darcia on the floor, and all the blood. Everything felt funny and sleepy and wrong. He knew he was under a spell. The evil witch's magic spell.'

When twins Henry and Gala are kidnapped and their nanny killed, Lieutenant Eve Dallas steps in to take control. But video footage shows what appears to be their mother arriving and leaving with the obviously drugged seven-year-olds. Something is wrong, and Eve, her husband Roarke and her brilliant team are ready to work round the clock to get the children back alive...

Lately, the In Death short stories have been published in anthologies following particular themes. This time it's fairy tales (as you might guess from the title). I'm quite intrigued by the idea of mystery/crime + fairy tales (in fact, I just bought a book that qualifies: Brother Grimm, by Craig Russell. Mixed reviews, but it's a Hamburg-set, fairy tale-themed police thriller. How could I resist?). However, I know I don't like the authors JD Robb is always packaged with, so I resisted the temptation in this case and read just the Robb story.

Robb picks an unexpected fairy tale to base her story on: Hansel and Gretel. Eve Dallas is called to the scene of a murder and kidnapping. A woman working as a nanny is dead, her two charges (twins) missing. The security video hasn't been tampered with and it's clear: it's the mother who took them. But when the mother and father come back from travelling, she has a reliable alibi. She also has an evil twin, one who's suposed to be locked up in a mental health ward in Sweden, but isn't.

I liked this one a lot. It's not really a whodunnit; rather, it's focused on the hunt for a known culprit, and it's really well done. Given the short space available, concentrating on one particular element works best. And it's really clever, with some really cool moments and even some truly frightening and tense ones. If you can't deal with 'children in peril' plots, then this one's probably not for you.

I particularly liked that there was a genuine fairy-tale feel to the story, even though it still fit perfectly in the usual In Death universe. I've criticised previous short stories in this series for going too far out in the paranormal element, but this was not like that at all.

My only issue with this one was: did Robb really need to make the Hansel and Gretel connection explicit? We’re not stupid!

MY GRADE: A B.

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After the Scandal, by Elizabeth Essex

TITLE: After the Scandal
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Essex

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 4th in the Reckless Brides series

CAN AN INDECENT PROPOSAL

When Lady Claire Jellicoe agreed to a walk in the moonlight, she never imagined her titled companion might have brutal motives. Nor could she have dreamed up such a brave rescue by the most unexpected savior of all: an inscrutable nobleman with a daring plan of escape—and a deliciously tempting embrace…

LEAD TO EVERLASTING LOVE?

Timothy Evans, the Duke of Fenmore, has palmed more treasures than he can count. Even for a man who grew up thieving in London’s stews, a stolen bride should be beyond the pale. But Fenmore won’t let scandal ruin the spirited beauty’s reputation. And now that she’s stolen his heart, how can he ever let her go...?

I've mentioned a few times that I'm on a bit of a quest to find a few new historical romance authors, as I've kind of been left only with a small number of authors I know I like. I've heard good things about Elizabeth Essex, so I thought I'd try one of hers. Unfortunately, this turned out to be exactly the sort of historical romance that I avoid: one full of characters behaving in preposterous ways and with no regard for history.

At first, I liked it well enough. As the book starts, Tanner notices Lady Claire Jellicoe being led out into the gardens by a man he knows is a rapist (it is not clear why he hasn't already had him kicked out of the party, which is at his grandmother's house, especially since the man came without an invitation). Tanner follows them out and stops the man in the nick of time. Claire is shaken, so instead of returning to the house just yet, Tanner suggests they go for a row on the river for a little while. Tanner has long been in love with Claire from afar, but has never dared approach her (in the part I read, it's not clear why he, a duke, would not have done so). He's trying to help, but he's also deviously thinking that she'll probably end up compromised, and they'll have to get married. Claire agrees to get on the rowboat. Okay, so far, so good. I buy everyone's reactions. Claire is taking a bit of a risk with her reputation by not immediately going back to her parents, but I understand completely why she'd do that. She's pretty upset. And Tanner's manipulation of the circumstances is not beyond the pale for me.

But almost straight away, things started getting iffy. As they're about to turn round to go back, the rowboat hits something. It's a dead body, and when Tanner hauls it up, Claire realises it's her lady's maid. She's been raped and murdered. Tanner is quite comfortable sharing this information with Claire, and she's unfazed.

Tanner suggests instead of going back to Richmond it would be better to go a bit further down the river into Chelsea, where he's got friends in a hospital and they can examine the body. He's determined to get justice for the young woman, he tells Claire, and he asks her if she'll help. She agrees, and they go on to the hospital. No problem at all, Claire blithely says, she'll send her parents a message saying she's gone back to London. She's 20 and unmarried, not an independent widow, or anything like that, but the narrative indicates that this should be fine and dandy.

Tanner has all sorts of low contacts from growing up on the streets before he discovered he was heir to the dukedom, so he feels well qualified to go make enquiries in the slums where the maid grew up (not clear why he'd want to start there rather than in Richmond, at the place where she was actually killed). Claire is insistent that she will come with him and help. She's a gently bred young lady with no experience of anything beyond balls and walks in the park. I think what the author is trying to convey here is that Tanner's good for Claire because he's someone who will help her do things, but Claire comes across as silly, rather than brave and resourceful.

And at this point, I was rolling my eyes so hard I almost passed out. The lapses in logic, the behaviour that no one seems to think is risky in any way, the poor motivations. Not for me.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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The Dark Winter, by David Mark

TITLE: The Dark Winter
AUTHOR: David Mark

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: Quercus

SETTING: Contemporary England
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: Starts a series

.
.
.Hull, northern England. Two weeks before Christmas. Three bodies in the morgue.

The victims - each a sole survivor of a past tragedy - killed in the manner they once cheated death.

Somebody is playing God. And it falls to DS Aector McAvoy to stop their deadly game..
.

It's coming up to Christmas in Hull, in the Northeast of England, and Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy is chilling in a city centre café with his young son. When he hears screams coming from the Cathedral just across the square, he immediately runs there to help, but is knocked over by a man in a balaclava running out of the building. Turns out a young girl has been killed, hacked to death with a machete by the very man who crashed into McAvoy. The victim had been adopted from Sierra Leone, and McAvoy soon finds out that she had escaped an eerily similar fate some years earlier, when her entire family had been killed by machete-wielding rebels while taking refuge in a church.

Within a few days, McAvoy has made the connection between her and a couple of other cases, all of which involve people who were the sole survivors of a tragedy and have now been killed in circumstances suspiciously similar to those they escaped. But while his colleagues accept his conclusions, some of them go for the easy arrest, in a direction McAvoy is convinced is the wrong one.

I thought this one was pretty great, with a really interesting plot and memorable characters.

Most memorable of all is our protagonist, DS Aector McAvoy. Mark has avoided the cliché of the dysfunctional cop with the screwed up/nonexistent private life, but succeeded in making his well-adjusted, pretty normal protagonist more than interesting enough. McAvoy is a giant Scotsman who looks like he should be a thug, but is actually really sweet. He's the type of person who gets really excited about creating a database to ensure all witness statements are cross-referenced (which makes him a man after my own heart).He is married to a woman he adores and who loves him right back, and he's the father of a cute little boy, with another on the way. He also a very decent guy who genuinely likes and respects women, which made it a pleasure to see the world through his eyes.

Work is a bit more unsettled. McAvoy's joined the Hull police force after an episode which saw him expose corruption amongst senior police officers. The unit he's joined is in the middle of a bit of a power struggle itself, with a new female boss recently appointed (only to show the public that this is not the old corrupt police, some suspect), and who's having to deal with the old-fashioned elements still in the ranks. McAvoy, with his past and his personality, is seen to be on the side of the modernisers, so he faces some of the same backlash as well, and this becomes really relevant during the investigation.

The suspense/mystery element is very well-done, too. It's a really intriguing setup, and I thought the pacing was great. I only figured things out half a step ahead of McAvoy, which is exactly as it should be. There were a couple of instances where I felt the police weren't really taking all the obvious steps (or, to put it another way, this isn't quite how Eve Dallas would have ran the investigation), but then, this might be because McAvoy is a relatively junior policeman and he's not in charge of running the whole thing. There could well have been all sorts of lines of investigation he wouldn't have been more than vaguely aware of.

Something I particularly liked was how the victims were humanised. Mark takes the trouble to make them more than pieces in a puzzle. That is especially the case for the young girl killed in the church and for a person McAvoy figures out is a potential target. You really feel the horror of what has happened, and I felt this added to the quality of the book.

In fact, the book is full of vivid and distinct secondary characters, not just the victims. From McAvoy's boss, a completely in-your-face woman I'd love to see more of, to Russ, the Scouse writer in rehab, they all come alive. There were only a couple of exceptions. One is the loutish good-old-boy inept cop who represents all that is wrong with the police and that McAvoy's boss is there to change. He would have been ok in most books, but compared to the subtlety with which the other secondary characters were drawn, he felt a bit cartoonish. The other is, surprisingly, McAvoy's wife Róisín. There's clearly a lot more to her and to her relationship with McAvoy than we're told about here, so she remains a bit of an enigma. That feels intentional, though, like Mark is saving the good stuff for future books. I'm looking forward to that!

Finally, I liked very much how Mark created the setting. Hull is portrayed with real fondness, but with no rose-tinted specs. From the author's bio, he's lived there, and it shows. I get really annoyed when people make a joke out of places like this, where post-industrial decline has created deprivation. Hull is a common punchline... what will £250K buy you? A bedsit in central London, a small house in the London suburbs, or the whole of Hull. Oh, how funny. You don't get that sort of feeling here at all, and that's great.

MY GRADE: A very strong B+.

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Love in the Afternoon, by Alison Packard

TITLE: Love in the Afternoon
AUTHOR: Alison Packard

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 364
PUBLISHER: Carina Press

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Starts a series

Kayla Maxwell is eager to shed her slasher-flick bimbo image—and she plans to do just that in her new role on daytime's most popular soap. With a chance to showcase her dramatic range, Kayla will be able to wash away the lingering betrayal and public humiliation left by her controlling, philandering ex-boyfriend.

Sean Barrett, the son of an influential, award-winning actor, is the hottest soap star in the country. Paired on-screen with the talented and beautiful Kayla Maxwell, Sean is determined to keep her at arm's length, burned before by fame-seeking actresses who had no qualms about using him to get to his famous father.

But when Kayla receives threatening letters, her past as a scream queen seems to be coming back to haunt her. Succumbing to an attraction neither one of them can deny, Sean and Kayla must face down her stalker and their own personal demons before trusting what they both feel—a love that lasts long after the cameras stop rolling.

When Kayla Maxwell finds out her character in the most popular daytime soap of the moment is pregnant, she assumes that means her role is about to be downgraded. It isn't; in fact, the writers are looking to pair her up with Sean Barrett's character... if the chemistry is right. It is and Kayla suddenly starts spending a lot more time with Sean, the soap's top actor. Turns out they not only have chemistry, they also like each other, so their relationship quickly turns into one of more than colleagues.

Love in the Afternoon was a quick, pleasant read, but I had too many issues with it to properly recommend it.

For starters, I found the conflict a bit contrived and romance-novely:
- He: "I once dated an actress who was only interested in me as a means to access my world-famous director father. I will therefore never date an actress ever again, even if all indications are that she's a nice, genuine person who's not a user".
- She: "I once dated an actor who tore me down constantly and made me question my acting ability. I will therefore never date an actor again, even if all indications are that he's a nice, caring man who appreciates my talent".

After the first half it felt like this conflict was done and dusted, but it reared its head in a pretty ugly way near the end, when the author felt she needed to split up our characters for a bit. The reason I say it reappeared in an ugly way is because it involves Sean acting like an idiot and accusing Kayla of all sorts of things, including (yes, he went there) of sleeping with him to advance her career and of planning to sleep with his father, too. The worst part is that this all felt completely out of character. He'd been otherwise portrayed as a pretty rational and intelligent guy who honestly liked and respected Kayla.

I also didn't think the suspense sublot was very good. It was a very half-baked and pointless stalker plot. Yawn. First: do all stories need to have a suspense subplot, and second: does the suspense subplot in every story about characters who are famous have to involve stalkers? It really didn't add anything to the story, other than a pretty bizarre ending.

I wasn't crazy about the characters, either. I mean, Kayla and Sean are both really nice people (well, except when Sean is going off on one). Kayla, particularly, is nice, cheerful, well-adjusted, has a great relationship with her family and is drop-dead gorgeous. Oh, and she knows all about cars and baseball. She has no flaws. It was pleasant to spend time with her, and I liked her well enough, but I didn't find her particularly interesting. Sean is slightly more intriguing as a character, mainly because of his estrangement from his father, but he didn't grip me, either. And just like the characters, the romance was never more than mildly pleasant. I felt there were way too many sex scenes, but that's probably just me. As I've mentioned before, I'm in a place right now where I find most romance novel love scenes tedious.

Finally, I got a bit annoyed by the abundance of sequel-baiting. I could have done with a lot less of Sean's friend Matt, a baseball player undergoing a very public meltdown. He's actually an interesting character, and Sean's frustration when he can't reach him is interesting, but his story could have been set up a lot more subtly.

It sounds like I hated this one, but I didn't. Packard has a really smooth, involving writing style, and even though this is a first book, it flowed really well. I also loved all the stuff about working in a soap opera. I don't watch soaps, and not because I don't have time, either. I actively don't like them. And yet I ate this stuff up in this book.

I think the plotting and character development issues I had might be just about this being a first book. For all its flaws, I felt Packard's writing showed enough promise that I'm planning to read another of her books.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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The Songbird's Seduction, by Connie Brockway

TITLE: The Songbird's Seduction
AUTHOR: Connie Brockway

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 316
PUBLISHER: Montlake

SETTING: 1908 England and France
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Effervescent bon vivant Lucy Eastlake is a young operetta singer whose star is on the rise in Edwardian London. Though struggling to maintain her beloved great-aunts’ household, she holds fast to the belief that “things will work out.” Now, with the fiftieth anniversary of a siege her great-aunt Lavinia lived through approaching, it looks like Lucy is right, because a fortune is due to be divided among the survivors. All Lucy and her great-aunts have to do is travel to a small Pyrenees town to claim Lavinia’s share of a fabulous treasure in rubies. What could be more simple?

Professor Ptolemy Archibald Grant is the brilliant, straitlaced grandson of a British lord who also withstood the siege. When his grandfather asks him as a matter of honor to escort his old love on the journey, the about-to-be married professor agrees, not expecting Lucy to be part of the bargain. Losing the great-aunts en route, the handsome, buttoned-down professor finds himself caught up in Lucy’s quirky, bewildering, and probably illegal efforts to reunite with them, as he is drawn further and further into an inexplicable infatuation with the free-spirited singer. What could be more complicated?

But when unwilling attraction gives way to sizzling passion, both will be forced to confront the ages-old question of whether love trumps honor…or the other way around.

Lucy Eastlake is a rising operetta singer in 1908 London. After her parents' death when she was very young she was passed on from one relative to another, until she arrived at her great-aunts' house. That was that. Aunt Lavinia and Aunt Prudence immediately took her in and gave her a home for good, as well as much love and support.

Now her great-aunts need her assistance, and Lucy is determined to give it. Some 50 years earlier, Aunt Lavinia was a young girl in the market for a husband in India (she didn't 'take' during her London season). She ended up in the middle of a siege, and the last group of survivors ended up in possession of a pouch of valuable rubies. Being all quite respectable and morally upright, they didn't feel it was right to just keep them, so they decided to wait 50 years. If by then the rightful owners hadn't shown up to claim the stones, any survivors from the group would divide the proceeds. Yeah, 50 years felt a bit excessive to me, too, but I went with it. It's just a McGuffin, after all.

Anyway, the 50 years are now up, and Lavinia needs to present herself at a small town in France, where she'll get her share. Both she and Prudence are a bit apprehensive about travelling abroad, so Lucy will be going with them to help. Which means that when one of the other survivors, the man Lavinia loved and lost, offers them his grandson as an escort, they refuse.

But things go all wrong at Calais, and the aunts end up taking the ferry on their own, with Lucy supposed to follow them on the next one. Things keep on going wrong, though, and Lucy ends up following the aunts (and her luggage!) all around France, in the company of the aforementioned grandson, anthropology Professor Ptolemy Archibald Grant. He's a man who's determined to be staid and proper, but who find it really hard in the face of Lucy's charms.

It's not only Lucy that's charming; that's probably the best way to describe the entire book. It's funny, sweet and very entertaining.

I loved Lucy and Ptolemy and their relationship. They seem at first sight to be a bit of a cliché: the flightly, ditzy heroine who keeps getting herself and her companion into trouble, and the stuffed shirt hero who must learn to relax. But they're much more than that. Lucy is very definitely not ditzy. She's actually really intelligent and sensible, and Ptolemy realises that immediately. And he's not naturally stuffy; that's part of his problem. He's got into a situation where it's expected of him, because it's expected that he wants to get into the next step in his profession. All he wants is to do fieldwork, but he's allowed himself to be persuaded that he shouldn't want that. With Lucy and her questions, he suddenly has to consider what exactly it is that he really wants. They made a great pair.

I should mention, since it will be an issue for some readers, that although this is a relationship where it's clear that both Ptolemy and Lucy fancy each other madly, and there's certainly a fair bit of (quite nice!) mental lusting, this is a book with no sex scenes. When sex does happen it's like this: they're kissing, it's obvious they're about to make love, and then we cut to the next morning. And my instinctive reaction is probably a sign of how fed up I am with the romance genre's increasing focus on hot sex scenes and how boring I tend to find them these days: I was delighted.

There isn't a great deal of plot here, just small (but really entertaining) adventures during a road trip, but I didn't mind. It was all enhanced by some fantastic secondary characters. My favourite was Margery, Lucy's cross-dressing artist friend. When Lucy and her great-aunts become separated, Margery continues the journey with them, in his costume (they wouldn't feel it appropriate to be escorted by a man), and they all become great friends. I loved both this friendship (especially how it leads to Lavinia and Prudence's characters developing in some really lovely ways during their adventures with Margery), as well as the sensitivity with which Margery was portrayed.

This is a good one, I should go back and read Brockway's previous Montlake book, which is apparently in the same vein.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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October 2014 reads

An ok month, nothing too special.


1 - The Songbird's Seduction, by Connie Brockway: B+
review coming soon

Charming road romance set in 1908 England and France. The hero is a professor trying hard to be serious and respectable, the heroine a carefree operetta singer. It's lovely.


2 - The Dark Winter, by David Mark: B+
review coming soon

A very promising start to a series. It's a mystery set in Hull (Northeast of England), and the main character is a really sweet Scottish man with an interesting homelife. The mystery itself (someone is killing people who cheated death sometime in their pasts) was well done, too.


3 - Promises Made Under Fire, by Charlie Cochrane: B
review coming soon

M/M novella set during WWI. When Tom tries to fulfil a request from a recently dead fellow soldier, he realises all he though he knew about the man's home life might be wrong. It's a sweet romance and I liked it well enough.


4 - Orfeo, by Richard Powers: B
review coming soon

The protagonist is an avant-garde classical composer who's been exploring using DNA in his work. This brings him to the attention of the authorities, and he goes on the run, which leads to an exploration of his life. I didn't love this one, but I liked it well enough.


5 - Binary Witness, by Rosie Claverton: B-
review coming soon

Serial killer mystery set in Cardiff. It features an agoraphobic computer hacker who helps the police investigate crime, and the ex-con who becomes her assistant. It was ok, but had some issues. My suspension of disbelief was at a breaking point more than once, and what is portayed as this amazing expertise with computer feels a bit pedestrian. I'm interested enough to read the next one, though.


6 - Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks: B-
review coming soon

I read this one for my book club, otherwise I'd probably have DNF'd it during the first section. It's mostly set during WWI, and (of course!) it starts with a doomed adulterous love affair which was tedious and exasperating. The sections in the trenches were much better.


7 - The Year We Fell Down, by Sarina Bowen: C+
review coming soon

New Adult. The heroine is a hockey player who suffered a spinal injury right before heading off to university. The hero is also a hockey player, recovering from a broken leg. They bond, but he has a girlfriend. I liked some aspects of it (e.g. the heroine's portrayal is focused on what she can do, rather than what she can't), but the romance didn't quite work for me.


8 - Love in the Afternoon, by Alison Packard: C+
review coming soon

Romance between an actor and actress in a daytime soap. Same verdict as the book above: it shows promise, and I'll be trying another by this author, but I had loads of issues. The conflict was a bit lame, and the stalker plot was half-baked.


9 - Murder in the Marais, by Cara Black: DNF
review here

Mystery set in Paris. A bit too preposterous for my tastes, with a heroine who hides evidence from the police for no good reason.


10 - J, by Howard Jacobson: DNF
review here

Read only because it was on the Man Booker shortlist. There are some really interesting ideas here, but the characters don't feel real.


11 - Brothers in Arms, by Lois McMaster Bujold: still reading
review coming soon

On the run from the Cetagandans, Miles washes up on Earth, where he has to contend with a Komarran ImpSec officer (who is technically his superior) and a missing payroll. I'm enjoying this one very much.


12 - Into the Blue, by Robert Goddard: still listening
review coming soon

Audiobook. Our protagonist gets involved in the disappearance of a guest at the house he's taking care of, and decides to solve the mystery. I really didn't like the first Goddard I read, but he came so well recommended that I decided to try another one. This one's more to my taste, less soap opera-ish. A bit too long, though. It feels like it takes forever to get anywhere.


13 - The Double Cross, by Carla Kelly: still reading
review coming soon

Western romance set in 1780s New Mexico. I'm liking it well enough, although it occassionally goes a bit too twee for my tastes.

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The Borders of Infinity, by Lois McMaster Bujold

TITLE: The Borders of Infinity
AUTHOR: Lois McMaster Bujold

COPYRIGHT: 100
PAGES: 1987
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Futuristic
TYPE: Science Fiction
SERIES: One of a couple of short stories set right after Cetaganda

.
.
On a rescue mission gone wrong, Miles Vorkosigan is captured by the enemy Cetagandans and thrown into a dome-shaped prisoner of war camp that seems a literal Circle of Hell. Against impossible odds, Miles organizes thousands of angry and dispirited prisoners into military formation that may offer the only chance for escape..
.
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This is the 3rd story in the anthology of the same title. As I mentioned in my recent review of Labrynth, the first story is set much earlier in the series, so I read it a while ago. This one comes right after Labrynth.

It starts right in the middle of things, with Miles being dropped into a Cetagandan POW camp. It's a fiendishly ingenious camp, one which complies with the letter of galactic rules for how POWs must be held, but definitely not with the spirit. Prisoners are simply dumped into a force-field dome and left. The exact amount of food required by the rules is sent in all in one lump, with no distribution. The result of this has been chaos and the victimisation of the weak by the strong. And into this chaos goes Miles, naked and on his own, and creates a functioning, functional society.

It's a really clever story. Miles obviously knows what's going on and what he's there to do, but we readers don't. Bujold manages to give us his point of view in a way that makes sense taken at face value, but which I'm sure will reward a second reading with a further layer, once readers find out what was really going on. It's a hell of an "a-ha!" moment.

The only thing I wasn't crazy about is really an incremental issue. Miles seems to be taking a page out of the James Bond rulebook and having a different love interest in each book or story. I don't have a problem with each of those romantic threads in isolation, but the fact that there's one in each story, and that they're all with different women, bothers me. It's not the women themselves. They've all been quite fabulous characters, and I have no issue with their portrayal, or even with the way Miles has treated them. It's just a distaste for the device, I guess.

MY GRADE: An A-.

NOTE: There's a really interesting review on goodreads where someone theorises that the story is "a riff on Dante's inferno". It's pretty convincing!

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Labyrinth, by Lois McMaster Bujold

TITLE: Labyrinth
AUTHOR: Lois McMaster Bujold

COPYRIGHT: 1989
PAGES: 101
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Futuristic
TYPE: Science fiction
SERIES: Comes after Cetaganda, which is the 5th full length book in the series.

.
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.Miles and his Dendarii mercenaries are on a mission in Jackson's Hole to retrieve a geneticist, who unexpectedly says he won't leave until a certain "monster" is neutralized and a tissue sample is taken from it. What Miles finds is something vastly different from what he was led to expect....
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This short story was published in an anthology called Borders of Infinity, just like the third story in it (which I'll be reviewing next). The first story is The Mountains of Mourning. I read that one a few months ago, as it's set quite early in the series, and waited until I'd read to the right point in the series before I started the other two.

In Labrynth, Miles is in Jackson's Whole to rescue a scientist from an earlier contract and deliver him to the Barrayarans. It really is rescuing; Dr. Canaba wants to get himself far, far away from the morally corrupt uses science is put to in Jackson's Whole, where money really can buy anything. However, he refuses to leave until Miles recovers some particularly valuable genetic material... which Dr. Canaba had earlier stored on the product of a super-soldier genetic experiment.

Miles is meant to not only retrieve the genetic material but to kill the 'monster' on whom it's stored, whom Dr. Canaba now regrets having agreed to create. Not an easy mission, and one in which everything goes wrong, ending with Miles being locked into a dank basement with the monster, to the amusement of the sadistic guards. But it turns out the monster is much more human that expected...

I liked this one. I was initially a bit queasy about a certain sexual element, but felt a lot more comfortable with it by the end. I liked the friendship that develops between Miles and Taura (the name he offers to the creature previously known only as #9). It felt like there was a real connection, two people whose outside shape conceals the person inside, although in completely different ways. And of course, there's the usual creative genius from Miles, manipulating people like crazy and wiggling out of an impossible situation by playing off the various evil sides against each other.

It was also nice to see people I remembered. I loved that the quaddies have thrived in the 200 years since Falling Free. Also, I remember being very intrigued by Taura when I read about her in Winterfair Gifts (which comes much later in the series, but is the only Miles story I'd read before starting on this read-through, as it was on an anthology with other authors I really liked). I also liked that Bel got a nice romantic entanglement. Very enjoyable.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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A couple of DNFs

TITLE: Murder in the Marais
AUTHOR: Cara Black

I picked this one up based on its setting: it's a mystery set in Paris. Aimée Leduc is a PI specialising in computer-based investigations (the book is set in the mid-90s, so that element felt a bit quaint!). She's approached by an old Jewish man asking her to do a decoding job for him, which she reluctantly accepts (she's wary of getting involved in dangerous work, since her policeman father was killed as a result of doing just that). Having broken the relevant code and accessed a photograph, she takes it to the location her client instructed. And there she discovers her instincts were right. The woman she was supposed to give the photograph to, an old Jewish lady, has been murdered, a swastika carved on her body.

And here we get to what didn't work for me. Of course, if Aimée just turned over all she knew to the police and butted out of the investigation, we wouldn't have a story. But there are ways of keeping her involved, and not all of them require her to behave like an idiot and illegally hide evidence from the police for no good reason, and in ways that completely wreck the police investigation. I didn't understand why Aimée did the things she did, and felt the plotting lacked subtlety. As did, actually, the parallel storyline about a former SS member who's now a minister in the German government and has been pressured by a Neo-Nazi secret organisation into coming to Paris.

The bones of the plot seemed ok, and I'd normally be interested in it, but the execution felt much too clumsy and contrived. The secondary characters were stereotypical and I found Aimée quite preposterous. I gave up after about 100 pages.

MY GRADE: A DNF.



TITLE: Black at Heart
AUTHOR: Leslie Parrish (now Leslie A. Kelly)

This is the third in a series whose first two books I really liked a few years ago, about an FBI team investigating cyber-crimes. In the previous book, Lily decided decided to go all vigilante and try to catch a paedophile the team had come across in an online investigation (her nephew had been killed by a paedophile, so her work was always really personal for her). Lily went outside her team to do so, and was captured by the man she was after, who kept her captive for days. Her team, including her enigmatic boss, Wyatt Blackstone, thought she was dead. She managed to call Wyatt for help, though, and he rescued her. Since then, Wyatt has helped her stay in hiding and everyone thinks she's dead. Except the paedophile suspects she might still be out there, and has hatched a plan to force her out.

This just didn't work for me. It took me ages to get into it at the beginning (weeks and weeks to read the first half of the book), mainly because I didn't find the characters particularly interesting. This was a trilogy constructed to have the last book contain the romance the readers would be dying to read, but I... wasn't. The relationship between Wyatt and Lily felt unequal in the first two books, and even though now she's supposed to be so much stronger, I just didn't feel it. Plus, I was a bit annoyed at the direction the suspense element was taking. The villain was revealed to be rich and powerful and preparing to use that power and money to target Lily, even using the police and justice system. That's not a plot that is to my taste.

So, a disappointment. I'm not sure if I would have liked this better when the series first came out, but I didn't now.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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Man Booker Prize 2014

For the last few years, I've been reading more and more from the Man Booker prize lists. I've found some fantastic books that way, books that I wouldn't have read otherwise, as they don't obviously sound like my sort of thing. Also, I like being able to participate in the very animated discussions about about who should win, and to do so with an informed opinion. The winner will be announced Tuesday evening, so I'll post here my impressions of the books I read.

The experience this year was really interesting. It was a pretty controversial longlist, very white, and with fewer women than in the last few years. There also weren't as many "Commonwealth" novels as usual. True, there were more books there than in previous years that appealed to me a priori, but that only meant that I was going to be more in my comfort zone, not necessarily a good thing.

I started reading like crazy as soon as the longlist was announced, and I was wowed by the books I chose to start with. By the time the shortlist was announced, I'd read 6. I absolutely loved 3 and liked the others very much. Three of those books (2 on the 'liked' camp, 1 on the 'loved') were on the shortlist, so I immediately embarked on reading the rest of the shortlisted books.

And there I hit a bit of a bad patch. I did not enjoy those three books, not at all. In fact, they ended up being DNFs, after reading good, long chunks of each. We're talking between a quarter and a third of the whole book, definitely enough to judge whether it was my thing or not. These 3 weren't.

I'll start with those, just so I can end in a positive note. How To Be Both, by Ali Smith and J, by Howard Jacobson I gave up on for the same reason, even though they are seemingly very different.

How To Be Both is quite experimental with form. It's got two halves, which the author instructs can be read in any order. In fact, half the printed copies have them in one order, half in the other, and the ebook comes with both versions for the reader to choose from. The section I started with is set in the present day, and it's about George, a teenager whose mother has just died. The other section is set in 15th century Italy, and it's about an artist who painted some wonderful frescoes in a palazzo George visits in her section.


J is set in a dystopian future, after an event referred to by the characters as "what happened, if it happened". It's a totalitarian world, in which the approach taken to ensure that event is not repeated is to force people to forget about it and deny what's happened, rather than our world's "never forget".

Both are very much novels of ideas, which is something I usually like. In particular, I thought the ideas explored in the Jacobson were really intriguing (the way I've heard him describe it is what happens when you actually succeed in annihilating 'the enemy', and there's no one to attack but yourself). But in both books the characters created to explore those ideas just weren't up to it. They didn't behave in ways I felt made any sense or recognised as human. It might be that I'm a failure as a reader of serious literature by insisting on characters with internal coherence and with something in them that feels true, but if that's the case, so be it.


The other book that didn't work for me was the one that's the bookies' favourite to win: The Lives of Others, by Neel Mukherjee. It's set in Calcutta in the late 1960s. Mukherjee protests that it isn't a family saga, but in the 150 pages or so that I read, that's exactly what it felt like. The Ghosh family all live together in a large house, and we get to see all the resentments and jealousies and rivalries. Actually, not all live together, because the eldest grandson, Supratik, leaves home early in the book and joins a group of revolutionaries living amongst impoverished villagers and trying to create an uprising.

There were some things I liked here. It's a vivid portrayal of a time and a place, and I'm attracted to the idea of the Ghosh household as a sort of metaphor for the divisions and inequalities of society. I had problems with the characters, though, although in a different sense as in the previous two books. These characters felt real, but they were overpowering and uninteresting in their small-mindedness and pettiness. I particularly resented the way the relationships amongst the women were depicted. They were all purely about competition and nastiness, which made me tired and frustrated. The Supratik sections could have opened up the focus a bit, but I found those much too heavy on the preaching, even if it was preaching of a message I agreed with.

Like How To Be Both and J, I'm sure The Lives of Others is a good book; it's just not to my taste.


And now we come to the ones I actually liked. First, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan (my review here). This one was a bit mixed. The action covers pretty much the whole life of a man who during World War II commanded a group of men being quite literally being worked to death in the Burma Death Railway. The sections directly related to the Death Railway were incredibly powerful. It's not just the sections set directly during the war, but those afterwards, showing what became of the men who were there (both Australian and Japanese) and how they dealt with those events. Unfortunately, there's also quite a bit of space devoted to the main character's private life: forbidden romance with his uncle's wife before the war, his marriage, his constant womanising. Those sections I didn't like at all. They didn't feel emotionally true and frankly bored me. Still, the book is definitely worth reading.



I also liked To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, by Joshua Ferris (my review here). It's a deceptively readable and funny book about a New York dentist whose identity is stolen by someone who uses it to get out the word about the Ulm, a lost tribe of Israel even more persecuted than the Jews (in fact, persecuted by the Jews). I say 'deceptively' because behind the comedy and witty conversations is a really interesting exploration of the search for something bigger than onself. It's a good one, and definitely worth a read




Finally, my favourite of the shortlisted 6 was We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler (my review here). It's about a woman who grew up in a family that was unique in a very interesting way. When we meet her we know that the family has pretty much disintegrated, and we explore why. The book looks at themes like how families work, the nature of sisterhood, the treachery of memory, animal rights, and activism, but it does this by telling a wonderfully engaging story. I really enjoyed it.




So, out of the 6 shortlisted books, I have a clear favourite. I'd love it if We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves won. I'm pretty sure that won't happen, though. If I had to call it, I'd definitely go with one of my DNFs, quite possibly The Lives of Others.

But I guess another issue is whether I think these are the right books on the shortlist, and the answer to that is absolutely not. Much as I liked the Fowler, there were two books that didn't make the shortlist that I thought were even better.

My absolute favourite on the longlist was The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth (my review here), which tells the story of the resistance after the Norman invasion of 1066. This was a book that completely wowed me on all fronts. Its use of language is incredible and I loved both the recreation of a time and place and the way it creates a fascinating character in its narrator. One of the best books I've read in recent years, and it's a huge shame that it didn't get on the shortlist. It's a bit of a hard sell, being written in what the author describes as a shadow version of Old English, and I suspect being on the shortlist would have meant a lot more people daring to start it.


But The Wake was closely followed by David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, which I thought was a fabulous read. Mitchell does his usual thing here of having a book composed of a group of novellas, six here. There is a strong narrative thread, though, as we have Holly Sykes in whose point of view we are in the first and last stories, and who's very present in the middle four. There's also a big fantasy Good vs. Evil-type element which is mostly in the background but pops up periodically in the different sections. I'm not describing it very well here, but it's great storytelling, with really interesting characters I cared about intensely and done with Mitchell's gift for mimicking different genres. I didn't want to leave this world when the book finished, and it will definitely be one I'll reread, probably soon.


I did read a couple more from the longlist. In fact, the first book I picked when that was announced was The Blazing World, by Siri Hustvedt (my review here). It tells the story of neglected artist Harriet Burden. This is done through her diaries and all sorts of different materials (interviews, articles, statements from people involved in her life), gathered by an editor after Harriet's death. It's a story about sexism and the willful blindness of people, who only see what they expect to see and will actually make huge efforts to ignore what doesn't agree with their worldview. It's a bit of a challenging one (some of Harriet's diary entries, in particular), but I liked it very much and found it worth the read.


Finally, as I write this, I'm halfway through Richard Powers' Orfeo. It's about a retired avant-garde composer who has been experimenting with using DNA in his music. For this, he's set up a small DIY lab in his home. This comes to the notice of the authorities, and cue the huge overreaction. Most of that plot line is to come, though. In the first half it has been set up, but mostly we've been hearing about the composer's life and about music... a whole lot about music. And the way Powers writes about it is fantastic. I've been trying to read it at home, because whenever he talks about a real, existing piece I want to hear it (and thank heavens for youtube!). I'm enjoying it.


On the whole, this has been an excellent year. There are always going to be some books that aren't my cup of tea, but the ones I liked, I really, really liked!

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The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth

TITLE: The Wake
AUTHOR: Paul Kingsnorth

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Unbound

SETTING: 11th century England
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

Everyone knows the date of the Battle of Hastings. Far fewer people know what happened next...Set in the three years after the Norman invasion, The Wake tells the story of a fractured band of guerilla fighters who take up arms against the invaders. Carefully hung on the known historical facts about the almost forgotten war of resistance that spread across England in the decade after 1066, it is a story of the brutal shattering of lives, a tale of lost gods and haunted visions, narrated by a man of the Lincolnshire fens bearing witness to the end of his world.

The Wake tells the story of Buccmaster of Holland, a man living in a Lincolnshire village at the time of the Norman invasion. The coming of the Normans is catastrophic for Buccmaster, as for so many others. With his family and his house gone, he decides to lead a group of men who've also lost everything and fight the invaders.

Out of all the books on the Man Booker longlist, The Wake is probably the most unlikely one. Not only was it crowd-funded, it's written in what the author describes as a "shadow tongue", a language inspired in Old English, but updated in such a way as to actually make it understandable to modern readers. Basically, there are no words of Latin origin (since the English tongue hadn't yet began to mix with the French) and no letters that weren't used at the time (no k or v or a couple of others I now can't remember), and the spelling, punctuation and sentence structure are very much not modern. The Author's Note gives us a couple of pronunciation rules (e.g. "sc" is pronounced "sh", so "biscop" should be read as "bishop") and there is a short glossary for words that the reader would not be able to guess or deduce (e.g. "fugol" means "bird"), but that's all we get before we are on our way. By the way, these items are both at the end of the Kindle version, which seems counterproductive; you'd definitely want to read them first (I did).

Anyway, I was intrigued when I first read about the book, but I was also quite a bit wary. Was this really necessary, or was Kingsnorth just being willfully difficult and pretentious? Did I really want to struggle through the sort of thing in the photograph below? (click to enlarge). I thought I'd wait and see, and only read it if it got on the shortlist.



Fortunately, I then listened to one of my regular bookish podcasts, Adventures With Words. What they do every year is read the kindle samples of all the books on the longlist and talk about their first impressions, and whether they would want to continue reading based on that. One of the podcasters was really enthusiastic about The Wake. She said that she'd quickly got into the rhythm of the writing and that she'd enjoyed what she'd read of the story. What she said tempted me, and I decided to pick it up next.

Well, I agree completely. This is one extraordinary book, and one of the reasons is, yes, the language. It's not some sort of gimmick; it's absolutely necessary to put you inside Buccmaster's mind and looking out of his eyes and to create the world he inhabits. He's not a modern character plonked down in the 11th century, and the language makes this obvious. I honestly don't think Kingsnorth could have achieved anything even close to the same effect without it. It's little things like, for instance, the way the word "women" is "wifmen", highlighting how in Buccmaster's worldview, a woman is a wife, and that's that.

Is it worth the effort on the part of the reader? To me, definitely. And really, although reading The Wake does require more concentration than reading other books, it's not as hard as the pic above would suggest. I started out sounding things out in my head, virtually reading the text out loud. 'Deofyl'? Ahh, devil. And 'triewe' must be 'true'. And what was 'cenep' again? *Checks the glossary* Ah, 'moustache'. That would have been exhausting, if I'd had to keep it up for an entire book, but I really didn't. After a surprisingly short while I had learnt the language, and other than sporadic checks of the glossary when a new term came up, I was just reading, almost as fast as usual. It's an effort, but not a superhuman one, by any means.

I've concentrated on the language and the setting so far, but the book is much more than a recreation of a particular time. There's a story, but mainly, this is a character study. Buccmaster feels completely real, and he's one fascinating character. He's very alien in some ways, but completely believable and understandable and recognisably human. He's basically a self-important braggart who thinks he's better than anyone else. Partly it's that before the Normans came he was "a socman of three oxgangs" (i.e. a free tenant farmer, owning three of that measure of land), as he constantly reminds us and everyone around him, and therefore superior to his companions, who didn't have that independence. Partly it's that he is devoted to the old ways and the old religions, and therefore has nothing but contempt for the idiots who pay any heed to the Christian priests. Here's Buccmaster talking about his grandfather:

he was eald he was ealder than any man in the fenns and there was those saed this was due to his wicce craft for he was not with the crist and that he wolde go on his death to hel. this is the scit what folcs specs if they is left to them selfs and it is why they sceolde be loccd ofer by greater men.

"greater men", of course, being Buccmaster himself.

And that short sentence I think gives you some indication of why, even though he's a terrible human being, Buccmaster is such a wonderful character and I was willing to make the effort to read his story. He's interesting and entertainingly irreverent. He effs and blinds all over the place... "fuccan" this, "fuccan" that, and his utter disdain for everyone else is jaw-dropping, and yet believable. He's a real pill and a right bastard, and he really comes alive during the book.

And I think, because he's the kind of person he is, the sheer hugeness and horror of what has happened to the country really emerges. He's no great leader of men, no paragon, and you get the feeling there must have been many, many like him around the country: people who have had the fabric of their lives ripped apart. People who had a measure of freedom have become unfree, completely beholden to people who just suddenly showed up and care nothing for anything other than what they can extract from them. I really felt the outrage.

And for all that this is a story about people in quite desperate circumstances and where really bad things happen, and are not taken lightly, it's fuccan hilarious. It's all in the details, like Buccmaster and his companions' outrage when they see that the French invaders are bald as eggs (i.e. they don't have huge bushy beards, like them).

I loved it. This is why I keep making the effort to try stuff on the Man Booker lists. There's no way I would even have heard of this book otherwise.

MY GRADE: An A.

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The Clockwork Scarab, by Colleen Gleason

TITLE: The Clockwork Scarab
AUTHOR: Colleen Gleason

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 361
PUBLISHER: Chronicle

SETTING: Steampunk version of Victorian London
TYPE: Mystery / adventure / romance (I think!)
SERIES: Starts the Stoker and Holmes series

Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes never meant to get into the family business.

But when you're the sister of Bram and the niece of Sherlock, vampire hunting and mystery solving are in your blood. And when two society girls go missing, there's no one more qualified to investigate.

Now fierce Evaline and logical Mina must resolve their rivalry, navigate the advances of not just one but three mysterious gentlemen, and solve a murder with only one clue: the strange Egyptian scarab. The stakes are high.

If Stoker and Holmes don't unravel why the belles of London society are in such danger, they'll become the next victims.

This sounded like fun. All I knew before I started was that it was steampunk and that it featured Miss Stoker (sister of Bram) and Miss Holmes (niece of Sherlock, daughter of Mycroft) investigating a mystery.

The action starts when Evaline Stoker and Mina Holmes are invited to a mysterious midnight meeting at the British Museum. They have been called in by Irene Adler (whom Sherlock Holmes readers will remember). Miss Adler has been tasked by Princess Alexandra to investigate the apparent suicides of several well-born young ladies, and wants to recruit Miss Holmes and Miss Stoker to help her do so. The only clues she has to go on are the Egyptian scarabas that have been found on the bodies. And then the meeting is interrupted by a noise in the supposedly deserted museum, and what should they find but another body, clearly one more in the string of killings?

There were some intriguing ideas here, and I liked the setup of two independent and clever young women who initially don't like each other much, but who must work together. However, this was just too preposterous for me. I didn't buy the setup for the mystery, I didn't find the details of the steampunk setting coherent, and then there's the time-traveller who comes out of nowhere with his iPhone (seriously).

But most of all, I think what made me stop reading was that it felt like Gleason was more concerned with whether something was "visually" really cool than with whether it would make sense, both in her plot and in her setting. As a for instance, take the scene where Evaline and Mina have managed to inveigle themselves into a meeting of a secret society that is obviously very relevant to their investigation. The masked leader is speaking, and what she's saying is all new information to our investigators about what the secret society is all about and what their plans are. But instead of listening till the end and gathering as much information as possible, Evaline suddenly stands up, pushes back her hood and loudly demands to know what the leader has done with the young ladies who've disappeared. Ah, but the utter stupidity and senselessness of her actions don't matter, because this gives her the chance to show off her preternatural strength in a really cool fight and escape scene (in a tie-in with another of Gleason's series, Evaline is a descendant of the vampire hunters in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles).

Adding to the annoyance, the names confused me. "Mina" immediately makes me think of Mina Harker, the character created by Bram Stoker. So part of my brain kept insisting that Mina was Miss Stoker, rather than Miss Holmes. It probably wouldn't have been a huge issue in a book I was enjoying, but since I was already irritated, it was the last drop.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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