More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Dragons and Demigods – Montague and Strong Detective Agency by Orlando Sanchez

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I love the Simon Strong and Tristan Montague books; in fact, I immediately re-purchased those I lost when I sold my business.  (You can read about that here.)  Possibly that’s why I was disappointed in Book 6, Dragons and Demigods.

The interaction between Simon and Monty is the heart of the story and the source of the series’ charm; the first several books and some of the short stories show this interaction – their trust, liking, appreciation, complementary styles and strengths – growing over time as they deepen their friendship.  Yet here, in this novel, and to some extent in the book just prior, Homecoming, Simon acts more like a tag-along than an equal.

Monty needs to face TK Tush in magical combat, as payback for his temerity in anchoring a magical bridge to her in a life and death situation.  Of course Simon goes with Monty, yet he shows almost no curiosity before the fight, how it will work, what his role is as Monty’s second, whether Monty even expects to survive.  Remember, Monty is Simon’s best friend and business partner; would you not have a zillion questions beforehand in a similar situation?  Instead Simon trails along, does what he’s told.

The other problem with this book is the secondary helping characters are weak.  In prior novels we had fantastic side kicks, but Dragons and Demigods once more drags in TK and LD Tush.  TK is so full of herself, so convinced that everyone should fall down in awestruck wonder at her awesome powers, that she cannot accept Monty “using” her.  How dare he!  Thus we wasted the first half in a duel.

Overall the plot is decent, fast moving and has some of the same fun quirkiness as the rest of the series.  Castor and Pollux making their first appearance since The Warden, and they are seriously bad news.  I look forward to seeing more of them as they play both helper and opponent roles.

Reading Dragons and Demigods left a bad taste; I felt like author Sanchez zigged left, taking Simon down a dozen notches, when I wanted him to zag right, leaving Simon as Monty’s equal and formidable and growing.  I purchased this from Kindle and think I’ll use the Kindle Unlimited borrowing for the next ones.

3+ Stars

 

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You Are Dead. (Sign Here Please) by Andrew Stanek – Humorous Fantasy

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You Are Dead.  (Sign Here Please) by Andrew Stanek is a cute story of one man fighting the bureaucrats of existence.  You see, semi-hero Nathan Haynes gets killed by a serial murderer intent on increasing his score on the serial-murderer-hall-of-infamy, but when Nathan reaches the afterlife he discovers our entire existence is run by bureaucrats, and if he does not sign his Form 21B, Decenent Acknowledgement and Waiver of Liability he can’t really stay dead.  Since Nathan thinks the form might be a ploy to bilk him out of his house, he refuses.

The story is cute enough to entertain one on a brain-dead evening.  There are some funny bits, some attempts at political satire, some man-vs.-machine moments.  I liked the part where author Stanek (who has a degree in microbiology from Caltech) explains that molecular biology, cosmologists, and deep sea oceanography are all scams, jokes to get funding forever while publishing articles using science buzzword bingo.

You Are Dead has a beginning, middle and it ends, no cliffhanger.  (Although we do wonder how Nathan will dispose of the ever-higher pile of bodies in his back yard.)  I was surprised to see this is part of a series of now five books as the plot and running jokes about bureaucrats are a bit thin for that.

Don’t read You Are Dead looking for great character development, although our semi-hero Nathan does get a little less gullible and a little more clued-in after he dies three or four times.  You will root for him and cheer when he gets tricky.  The head bureaurocrat Director Fulcher is probably the most interesting character who does grow through the book as he develops a very strong desire for revenge and to personally trick Nathan into signing.

Don’t read You Are Dead looking for great writing or great comedy although it’s cute, funny enough to enjoy and written well enough to be easy and pleasant.  The author turns everything on its head, which is funny the first dozen times.  The town of Dead Donkey is a running farce that you can enjoy without searching for deeper meaning or political insights.

Do read You Are Dead. (Sign Here) if you enjoy ridiculous stories and want an easy book for that evening read after work.

3 Stars

A Proper Hellhound – A Montague and Strong Detective Story, or Time for Peaches

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A Proper Hellhound has some good moments.  First, it’s a Montague and Strong short story featuring Peaches, the black hole of meat consumption, aka the hellhound pup, son of Cerebus and gift from Hades.  Author Orlando Sanchez has a hit with Peaches, one of his most endearing characters and one that lets his human bond mate, Simon Strong co-star.

On the other hand, Sanchez continues developing Simon Strong into a whiny, clueless null character, a most irritating development that was evident in the last couple novels (especially the latest, Dragons and Demigods) and a development that I hope he abandons quickly.  Here’s an example.  Simon asks for a weapon; Ezra tells him that he and Peaches are the weapon and Simon says “What does that mean?”  C’mon.  Simon is supposedly a super lethal ex-New York Task Force member, the supernatural equivalent to Special Forces, and he does not understand how he plus his mega lethal hellhound are a weapon?  Heck, I understood it!

Simon stumbles through Peaches’ training session, never quite understanding that what he is doing and what he is learning is the training.  He fights off several baddies, saves his dog (and his dog saves him) and still doesn’t realize that he plus Peaches can do almost anything.

The other thing that’s beginning to annoy me about these books is the number of new secondary characters thrown in while older ones simply fade away.  Some of the older ones were pretty interesting, well worth a few more paragraphs, while some of the new ones, such as TK Tush and LD Tush, would be better forgotten because they are too self-centered to play nicely in the M&S sandbox.  Ezra is one of the best side characters from prior novels and I was glad to see him return.

To sum up:  One the plus side we have a Peaches-centric story that moves fast with the usual dollop of Simon’s mayhem and favorite side character Ezra makes a return cameo.  On the minus side Simon continues his descent back into clueless adolescence.  Ugh.

3 Stars

Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1) by Brad Magnarella, Good Start to an Urban Fantasy Series

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Demon Moon is the first of several books in the Professor Croft urban fantasy series by Brad Magnarella.  I was reluctant to get into it after several disappointing urban fantasy novels, and a little turned off from the wizard/professor idea after the Alastair Stone series by R. L. King.  I’m glad I took a chance as Demon Moon has potential.

Negative Points

  • Harry Dresden similarities.
  • Resolution with the New York policewoman was obvious
  • Inconsistent pacing and emotional/action ups and downs.
  • Prof Croft needs more personality.

Demon Moon’s set up is very close to Butcher’s books:  Wizard protects the big city with no help and some obstruction from his group, sword cane, Latin invocations, police involvement.  However the plot and character work out differently and it did not feel to me that much of a a Harry Dresden redo; I expect the author will create his own voice and character as we go along in further novels.

Much as I enjoy the first dozen Dresden novels, I don’t care for the Butcher’s new direction with Harry in the Winter Court.  I was glad to read something like the first few Dresden stories but a new character and a fresh start.

Positive Points

  • Everson Croft is passionate about protecting people, whether innocent bystanders or inept conjurers.
  • Croft admits he’s a relative novice in magic skills.  It’s refreshing to see a humble main character!
  • No sex, minimal foul language or blasphemy
  • Secondary characters have potential.
  • Menacing backdrop and setting with New York in a state of near anarchy after a Crash

I am a bit torn on rating this.  Demon Moon is better than blah, not quite as good as solid 4 star novels.  Let’s go with 3 Stars, mainly because the main character needs some work.  It’s a good start to what could be an entertaining series, but we’re not there yet.

 

Modern Sorcery (Jonathan Shade Book 1) – Decent Urban Fantasy

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I’m beginning to think that some of the hardest things in the world are to write a decent fantasy quest novel (5 assorted misfits seek the Object of All Wonderfulness to Save the World) and good urban fantasy.  Quest stories are usually awful unless the quest itself is subtle, downplayed, perhaps the Object is a throne or some event.

Urban fantasy is a growing genre with some hits and more misses.  Some authors make it look easy, but let’s think about it.  Good urban fantasy has to:

  • Have an engaging hero or heroine (hereafter referred to as “hero”)
  • Side kicks are optional, but if present must also be believable and interesting on their own
  • Hero ought to have some unusual traits or magic
  • Have a reason the hero is on the outs/suspected by/worried about/in hock to some overall mystical group that has power over him.  Think Harry Dresden and the White Council.
  • Have a sense of obligation.  Perhaps the hero seeks to save us regular folk from encroaching vampires, or to keep the peace among groups of fae, or is a PI.
  • This obligation must be dangerous and difficult, with moral dilemmas
  • Plus let’s not forget the basics of any novel:  Plot, character, setting, timeline, dialogue, so on

So yes, it’s difficult.

Modern Sorcery (Jonathan Shade Book 1) has some requisite elements.  The main character, Jonathan Shade, is reasonably engaging with a couple well-done side kicks.  He’s without magic himself but is also not subject to it.  Plus he’s dead and come back.  I particularly liked his librarian friend Sharon and typewriter Esther but his semi-partner Kelly lacks appeal and is 2-dimensional.

Overall the book’s main lack from an urban fantasy point is Jonathan’s rationale for taking on magic users.  He’s a PI and his old girl friend asks for help.  That doesn’t give the book much framework to hold the story.

Author Jonas Gary does a decent job with this novel and kudos to him for trying and getting it mostly right.  I don’t much enjoy the story, partly because the overall plot was a little over the top and Jonathan’s girl-to-rescue was a nasty piece.  Dialogue was a bit weak and stylistically inconsistent, sometimes snarky, sometimes frank, sometimes just bleah.

I’m unsure whether I’ll look for more books in the series.  At the moment (June, 2018) there are 10 books in all, so author Gary likely improves his craft.  Book 1 is a solid try.  If you think you’d like to try it, Amazon offers this for $.99.

3 Stars

Carpet Diem by Justin Lee Anderson: Averting the Apocalypse One Step at a Time

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I found Justin Lee Anderson on Hoopla Digital which recommended him as an author similar to Jodi Taylor, who writes the excellent Chronicles of St. Mary’s novels.  Sadly this novel, Carpet Diem, just misses.  Carpet Diem is meant to be a humorous take on “How We Averted the Apocalypse”, much like Good Omens or Tom Holt’s novels.  It has funny moments and the hero postpones the Apocalypse, but it isn’t overall a winner.

Characters

Writing a humorous book is hard work!  Authors need characters that carry the load, characters that we readers engage with, care about, people with senses of humor.  The whole time I read Carpet Diem I kept wondering why the book wasn’t better, and I think it is because the author created characters he thought were funny in themselves, and didn’t write dialogue or events that were funny.

None of the character was very interesting.  We have the drunken great aunt, the extraordinarily people-averse hero (because he has too-good a sense of smell), an angel or two, a demon or two, a few oddball, never explained magic characters, and assorted side kicks.  The only one with any personality is the hero, Simon, who must face his immense dislike of crowds (even tiny crowds, as in one or two people) to retrieve his carpet and gift it to the apocalyptic force of his choice.  Simon was moderately interesting.

Overall

I think part of the problem is the characters go through truly harrowing, deathly events that do not feel real.  Simon faces death and we readers just go along with the story, not really feeling any terror or anything more than a vague anxiety.  The story reads like a story, not like anything that characters or we readers experience.

Perhaps part of my negative feeling for Carpet Diem is that I felt gypped.  The story is not compelling and not the quality of Chronicles of St. Mary’s novels or Good Omens.  I expected something with plenty of plot, great characters and dialogue and funny moments in between terror.  Carpet Diem is not these things.

3 Stars

Stranger Magics by Ash Fitzsimmons – Not Quite Midsummer Nights Dream!

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Ash Fitzsimmons took the bare bones of The Midsummer Nights Dream and wrote a full novel with plenty of action and developed characters, some humor and yes, even some mistaken identities in Stranger Magics.

Quick Synopsis

Colin LeFee owns a bookstore in Rigby on the Atlantic coast, lives quietly except when helping Father Paul exorcise faeries who are having too much fun in our world.  (Some Fae get their jollies tormenting humans, others like to rape or just be obnoxious.)  The story opens with Colin kicking one of Oberon’s court out of town.  When Colin returns home he finds his neighbor Mrs. Cooper bringing a 16 year old girl to him.  The girl is terrified (and defiant, like most frightened people), denies she belongs in Rigby, wants to go home.  Colin investigates and discovers the girl is Olive, long lost daughter of his old flame Meggy, and a changeling, whom Titania kicked out.

You see, Titania is the queen of faerie, powerful, nasty and Colin’s Mommy Dearest.  Colin’s dad died about 700 years ago and was human, making Colin half fae.

Along the way we meet Oberon, several wizards both good and semi-good, Robin Goodfellow, Mab, a seminarian and the best character of all, Mrs. Cooper.

Characters

Fitzsimmons did a great job building Colin’s character.  He could have made Colin too good to be true, or a man tormented by his dual nature, but instead he took the harder path to make Colin a real person, someone who cares about others and about whom we care.  As Colin mentions, full-blooded fae cannot love and most don’t try; we can blame his human parent for the fact that Colin can care, does care about people in general and individuals in particular.  Colin takes his role as protector seriously; he protects us humans from other fae and if needed, from worse.

Colin suffers; he is smart, witty, perceptive.  He is also stupid.  Somehow he thought that spending a night with Meggy 16 years ago and leaving the next day was the honorable thing to do; Meggy of course did not share his opinion.

Olive was the least developed character.  She is a typical petulant teen, except now she is a faerie exile marooned here with a mom she denies, constrained from some magics, alone and hating every moment and person in her new American life.

Several of the other characters are well developed, Meggy, Slim/Rick the bartender/wizard artisan, Joey the seminarian, Toula the wizard, and my favorite, Mrs. Cooper.  Mrs. Cooper starts as your basic busybody old lady neighbor, yet somehow knows to bring Olive over to Colin (and who would bring a 16 year old girl to a 20-something guy for help instead of calling 911?), who calmly accepts the fae infestation and helps Colin defeat the attacking faeries by hitting them with her stainless steel teakettle.  She doesn’t say much and what she does say is tinged with kindness and humor. Fitzsimmons made excellent use of a could-have-been prototypical character for the story.

Overall

The writing style is good.  I enjoyed the flashbacks as Colin fills us in on his 700+ years in the human world and explains his antipathy to Titania.  I wasn’t real sure I liked the ending with Colin in his new role, but given the alternatives he faces and the fact that he literally has no good option that would not cause greater woes for himself and all of us humans, it makes sense.

I hope the author, who bills herself as an “unrepentant car singer” writes more, either with the same world or explores new territories.  I will certainly purchase more from her.

4 Stars

Blood Crossed: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Novel, #1 (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department)

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Blood Crossed: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Novel, #1 (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department) has great reviews on Amazon, enough that I paid $2.99 to read it.  That was a mistake.

Blood Crossed uses the trope of a police department dedicated to protecting us from vampires, werewolves and assorted supernatural evil villains.  The main character is Piper, a young woman, supposedly immortal (we don’t know how), who with her new partner Reaper Payne (also immortal and not human), goes out to capture vampire Gallien Cross who escaped from secure confinement.  So far so good.

Unfortunately neither Piper nor Payne nor the two wanna-be Retrievers that Piper is to evaluate are particularly interesting.  The world building could be good but authors Logsdon and Young race us through the back story without taking time to let the set up take shape.  The writing isn’t bad, and the dialogue is reasonably decent at moving the story along, but the lack of character depth an superficial world building leave me cold.

The authors have a sequel with even better reviews and ratings, but I shall pass.

2 Stars

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Painted Pathways – Fantasy with an Artistic Flair

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Painted Pathways by Melinda VanLone and Sonja Field is an intriguing fantasy with a different feel to it.  Lark Previn is an artist who moved to New York from a small rural town and like most artists, she is broke and worried.  She’s not able to recapture the free spirited art she did as a child and her work is not good enough to keep her scholarship.

Things change when she receives a mystery gift in the mail, a set of brushes and paints.  With those she is transfixed, completely taken over by the need to paint.  Several days later when she wakes up she finds she has recreated the carnival she had envisioned as a child.  But these paintings are magic.  They have real paths to the carnival and someone threatening wants them.  And her.

The story flows well although the plot is somewhat confusing.  People die.  Or do they?  She meets a hawk who is a man, and a man who is a type of vampire.  Lark wants to understand the paintings and how she makes them but is terrified of losing more days in a fugue, forgetting to eat, to drink, to feed her cat.

Overall this is an intriguing novel; in fact I looked at more by Melinda VanLone.  The plot could use a bit more clarity and the character is somewhat flat.  We never learn why Lark is connected to the carnival, why she continues to see and paint it.  She learns to paint stories as they occur, or do the stories happen because she paints them?  This isn’t a great novel, still a pleasant read.

3 Stars

I’m not including links because this is not available currently on Amazon.

 

Obsidian Son – Great Sounding Fantasy, But What A Bust

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I don’t usually review books I don’t finish.  Since I read 5 to 10 books a week and review only a couple, I put most effort into books I like or ARCs.  I’m making an exception for Obsidian Son, the first novel in a four-part series by Shane Silvers.  Obsidian Son sounds so good and has great reviews on Amazon, a fun premise, neat cover.  It’s all there, everything except the book itself.

The story starts off with our hero, Nate Temple, wizard, bookstore owner, super rich young fellow and recent orphan, sneaking up on the Minotaur to engage in a bit of cow tipping.  He gets smeared with cow dung, arrested, interrogated by the police, released.  When he gets home to have a drink with his two best friends he simply tosses his coat into the laundry basket and makes drinks – without washing up.  Sorry, that was hard to take.

The main character is a sophomoric jerk with an overabundance of ego and a nasty attitude about women.  (Quote:   “To women and careers and the men who ride them.”)  Yet this same character hasn’t asked his office manager for a date because he might get turned down.  Yeesh.

Author Silver has way too heavy a hand with foreshadowing.  Even without getting past the first quarter of the novel I could tell that Temple’s mysterious client is himself a dragon (he smelled like rocks and snakes), that Temple’s friend Peter was somehow corrupted by someone magic (since he had on a new bracelet and suddenly had magic abilities), that Temple will discover his parents’ company used magic as much as technology.  So on.  Really, how much more obvious can someone be, yet Temple, who is supposed to be super smart never notices and never even asks his buddy Peter where he got magic?

The author clearly has little to no understanding how people who have money actually use it, or what the consequences might be of flinging Aston Martin cars around to one’s friends.  The main character thinks nothing of driving through red lights, speeding down urban streets and doing donuts to stop his flashy new car in front of his friend.  Does anyone really think that having a fancy car means he doesn’t have to share the road?  This is when I decided to pull the plug and delete Obsidian Son from my reader.

The last point is the blasphemous use of the name Jesus.  This is the name of God’s only begotten Son, not some casual throw-away interjection.  The author tossed a couple of these in the mix too.

Overall, 1 star.  Did not finish and do not recommend.