More Books than Time

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

Midnight Riot or Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch – Wizard vs. Revenant

by 2 Comments

One of the best lines in Rivers of London is Inspector Nightingale’s answer to Peter’s question about wizards:

“No.  Not like Harry Potter.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not a fictional character.”

Yes, magic is real; wizards are real; ghosts and vampires and revenants are real. Father Thames, the spirit of Thames upriver of London, is real as is his rival Mother Thames who handles everything from London to the sea.

My copy is titled Midnight Riot, apparently the UK version is named Rivers of London.  Don’t worry, it’s the same book and it’s good.

Plot Quickie

Peter Grant is nearly through with probationary status in London’s police and is ready for assignment to something – hopefully something more exciting than the you-are-making-a-valuable-contribution-Case-Progression-Unit where he would shuffle papers when he wasn’t creating papers.  Peter meets a ghost while checking the area where a man was murdered near Covent Garden.  Peter doesn’t believe in ghosts but comes back a few nights later to ask the ghost a question; that is when he meets Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the only wizard currently employed by London’s finest and in fact the only wizard in London (or possibly the only one in the UK at all).

Nightingale recruits Peter (anything to avoid Case Progression) to help him since at the moment Nightingale is feeling a bit worried about the lack of magical manpower and other problems are poking up that need a wizard’s attention.  We have a case of vampires, a brooding feud between the spirits of the Thames, and a spate of completely irrational, vicious attacks.

Peter works with his friend Leslie, a more successful copper of the standard variety, Nightingale, assorted detectives, Molly the vampiric housekeeper, the children of the warring Thames clans and assorted opera goers and tenors to solve the mystery of the attacks and return London to its more-or-less peaceful self.

Characters

Peter is great.  Midnight Riot is written first person with Peter the narrator so we see everything through his eyes.   Other people see Peter as easily distracted but from our viewpoint, riding along in his head, he makes perfect sense.  Peter makes intuitive jumps and he is curious about things that seem peripheral to others but are in fact quite important.

Peter is resourceful, as witness by his method to bring peace between the Thames’ families and smart.  He figures out who is harboring the spirit that is causing the distressing attacks and cruel murders and is able to time his final intervention to save the spirit’s host from bleeding to death.

We see Leslie through Peter’s eyes and her words and how she compares herself and Peter.  She is a little less finely developed than Peter but interesting and I’m looking forward to meeting her again in the next book.

Inspector Nightingale and his peers in the more mundane side of the London constabulary are interesting too and poke up just often enough to keep us interested.  Peter’s mum and father play bit roles and I’d enjoy knowing his unflappable mum.

Summary

Midnight Riot is the first in a series featuring our hero Peter Grant.   I enjoyed the tight plotting and character development and am picking up two more books from our interlibrary loan system tomorrow!

The Long Way Down – Nasty, Demon-Filled Las Vegas Sorcery

by Leave a Comment

It’s hard to like a book when you don’t like the characters.  Daniel Faust, the sorta hero in The Long Way Down, is a Las Vegas sorcerer who earns just enough to keep a roof over his head but not enough to stay clear of the seedy side of the town.    Daniel works as a private investigator – not clear whether licensed or informal – and takes on cases involving porno producers, half-demons and murders.

Daniel is meant to be the Good Guy here.  He takes on a case to investigate the murder of a young porno actress, discovers she was murdered, and works out vengeance on her murderer.  The vengeance turns out far worse than he had planned and spirals out to wreck havoc on a group intent on opening the Etruscan Box.

The The Long Way Down moves fast, which is a good thing as otherwise you’ll feel coated with the gunk under your bathroom drain.  The characters are all unpleasant, even Daniel.  If you think about it, a guy who’s willing to impersonate a snuff film maker in order to have revenge, is not the kind of person you want to spend time with.  His heart is supposedly on the side of the good and the true, but his actions show a man willing to murder – but only in the name of righteousness – and to steal and to cohabitate with a succubus.

Sorry, not my kind of guy.

The characters are well done, although icky, and a few are too nasty to be believable.  The best part is the setting.  I’ve not been to Las Vegas but this felt real.

Most novels with creatures from Hell feature good guys who fight the demons; Daniel in The Long Way Down cooperates with his girlfriend/succubus Caitlin to stop the apocalypse.  Daniel is too fascinated with Caitlin to wonder why her boss, demon prince Sitri, wants to avoid the apocalypse.

I finished The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust Book 1)  mostly out of curiosity, but wish I hadn’t.  It left me feeling depressed and not at all interested in further books about the character. The blurb for Craig Schaefer’s second book, Redemption Song, has Daniel enmeshed in the plots of Prince Sitri in order to keep his “girlfriend”, succubus Caitlin.  Anyone with the sense God gave a gnat knows to steer away from demons and the schemes of hell, but apparently Daniel didn’t figure this out.  I shan’t be reading this one as it sounds even more depressing and with more unpleasant characters.

3 Stars

Paranormal Chaos – Third Book in an Interesting Series

by Leave a Comment

I started Paranormal Chaos (The Shifter Chronicles) one evening when I was pretty tired and not feeling much like a challenge.  The book starts with a chase scene, Marcus and side kick Steve the Minotaur, running for their lives from a herd of centaurs.  Once they escape we flash back to Marcus’ thoughts on being asked to take on the mission to keep the Minotaurs, and by extension the centaurs, in the treaty between paranormal and normal humans.

I almost quit at this point.  Marcus and the Council do not get along.  This sounded familiar, the Harry Dresden series, the Alex Verus series, but dressed up with Minotaurs and centaurs.  I decided to keep on for a few more pages and I’m glad I did.  The book is a solid read, entertaining with interesting flashes to Greek mythology and glimpses of Root’s excellent world building.

Somewhere around page 50 it dawned on me this was likely the most recent book in a series, but that in no way inhibited reading.  Paranormal Chaos has its own adventures that do not rely on the prior novels.

Plot Summary

The backstory is humans and magically-endowed humans signed the Reformation Treaty about 20 years before and invited all the non-human sentient magical creatures – centaurs, Minotaurs, elves, Bookworms and more – to sign on too.  Now the Minotaur leader sent notice to the Council they are withdrawing from the treaty.  Council sends Marcus Shifter to bring them back into the fold.  Steve convinces best friend Steve to help.

Since this is a fantasy novel Steve is revealed to be the son of the Minotaur leader, the Alpha, and her expected heir.  There are disagreements among the Minotaur around how they should engage with every other species.  The Alpha wants to be hands off, leave everyone alone; Steve wants to adapt to the modern world and engage as a normal person; a faction led by Makha wants to re-establish the human/Minotaur cooperative domination (and tyranny) described in ancient Minotaur books and art.

Steve and Marcus discover Makha’s plans and run back to alert the Council and other species of impending attacks.  There is a short, brutal war which ends with most species agreeing to try again.

Fantasy Roundabouts

Several events in Paranormal Chaos don’t make a ton of sense but they help build the story.

  • Minotaurs remain fascinated with labyrinths and their rite of adulthood requires passing a maze with hostile creatures and death traps and emerging alive.  It’s not clear where the creatures and traps come from; we don’t see much (any) Minotaur magic.
  • The Underground was a handy device that you need to accept as part of the story and not try to understand.  (It wasn’t any clearer after I read the previous three books.)
  • Not at all clear exactly how or why the centaurs and Minotaurs ended up in northern Canada.  Both creatures were originally from the Mediterranean; even if one figures they fled when Rome got organized and made it unpleasant it seems odd they would go to Canada.
  • The whole war didn’t make a ton of sense either.  Makha didn’t know much about humans or how we would react if a bunch of odd guys started attacking and killing folks.  Since Minotaurs live in the real world they would be vulnerable to conventional human weapons.  (Makha had his own fruitcake ideas.)

Fun Points

Loved the Bookworms!  Of all the creatures named they were the best.

The ending was excellent, true to people nature.  “Now we figure out how to patch our worlds together.  But this time we do it as friends.”  “We struggled to deal with the shock of how close we’d come to being defeated by Makha.  And how much we all had to lose.”  Even so the Elves declined to do more than show up to meetings and the Vampires didn’t do that.

Summary

Author Joshua Roots did a great job building a compelling story using bits and pieces of myth, standard fantasy-in-a-box tropes, interesting characters and enough magic to make it flow.  After I finished Paranormal Chaos I bought the first two books featuring Marcus Shifter and Steve, Undead Chaos and Summoned Chaos.  They were also excellent; in fact the second, Summoned Chaos, was my favorite of the three.  Highly recommend all three for fantasy lovers.

Note:  I received a free advanced E copy from NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

 

Second Book Doldrums – All That Lives Must Die: Book Two of the Mortal Coils Series, Eric Nylund

by Leave a Comment

Have you noticed that the second book in a series is often weak? I read Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund and enjoyed it enough to purchase the second book, All That Lives Must Die: Book Two of the Mortal Coils Series.

The premise is interesting, with enough twists to make the book readable and enjoyable and it includes most of the same characters.  Even so, All That Lives Must Die felt flat.  Book 1 was quirky, with oddball characters like Uncle Henry (aka Hermes), Grandmother’s strange rules, plus the ongoing sibling fights and vocabulary insults with Fiona and Eliot.  It was a fun read.

Book 2 still has a little but Uncle Henry is almost invisible, the Rules are undone and even Eliot and Fiona’s rivalry feels old.  Author Eric Nylund may have done the stale feeling on purpose, as it fits Eliot’s and Fiona’s moods and fears, but it didn’t make us readers feel anything except uneasy and a bit bored.

The premise of All That Lives Must Die is great.  Eliot and Fiona are going to a most unusual high school, Paxington University, where duels are common, where gym class consists of defying death while causing mayhem to the opposing teams, where the one class is about myths.  The students are from the Immortals, Infernals and long-time magical families.  Only about half will graduate and the remainder may fail due to being dead.

The school scenes are the best in the book.  I kept wanting to shake Fiona and Eliot and yell, “Are you insane?”, but of course that’s kind of hard to do with a novel.  The other students range from vicious to vacuous with a skew towards nasty and mean.  Kind of like everyone’s high school, right?  Except the death and injury here are real.

The weakest part of the novel is Eliot’s decision to follow his supposed lady love into hell, despite her continual rejection, despite him knowing it is Hell, as in real, true, infernal depths.  Before this we see him annoyed that no one recognizes him as Fiona’s equal, as a Hero, and he spends several boring pages sulking.  I gave up trying to tell him to stop being stupid!

The weakness is compounded by Fiona deciding to help him help his elusive girlfriend, in her case made even dumber because she sees her father as also in the mix.  (It is pretty clear that neither sibling ever learned Good from Evil as they continued to see choices in the present moment sprinkled with wishful thinking and ignored future consequences.)

Overall All That Lives Must Die: Book Two of the Mortal Coils Series is fairly good, a solid 3 star fantasy.  It simply isn’t as good, as enjoyable as the first novel in the series which was a solid 5.  The best part is high school, seeing Fiona and Eliot (mostly Fiona) deal with the murderous students and faculty and the weakest is Eliot and his gonadal-driven heroics.

By the way, this is not a book for kids.

 

For Two Nights Only – Tom Holt – This Defines Snarky

by Leave a Comment

If the dictionary of slang needs to define “Snarky” they only need to point to this book, For Two Nights Only, an omnibus containing Overtime and Grailblazers.  I needed a book to take to the beach and this one has gathered dust ever since I bought it 8 years ago and couldn’t get past page 5, so it volunteered to be my read for the day.

This time I managed to finish both novels.  In fact I got mostly through Overtime that afternoon and enjoyed enough that I finished it later that week and read Grailblazers a couple weeks later.  These stories are reasonably funny but I don’t recommend a steady diet of them.  It’s entertainment that makes you feel a little crawly afterwards.

At one time I loved Tom Holt’s books, especially Who’s Afraid of Beowulf, but got tired of the endless feeling of sitting on a mountain watching the idiots go by while making smug little pokes and jabs.  Holt’s novels will not help you develop the virtues of kindness and charity.

The plots are convoluted with characters coming and going (sometimes simultaneously).  I read once that P. G. Wodehouse used to chart his plots out on big poster-sized papers all over the walls.  I wonder how Tom Holt does his since they get a bit tangled.

Overtime

Overtime is screwy.  We start off with Guy Goodlet, RAF pilot during WW2 losing fuel and altitude over France, but quickly bring in the main character, John De Nesle, who is really Blondel, the troubadour who found King Richard the Lion Hearted by singing under every castle in Europe.  Except this Blondel is under contract to the nefarious financiers at 32A Beaumont Street who have figured snazzy ways to avoid tax by shifting money between centuries.

The book gets confusing after this.  The Beaumont Street folks and Blondel are at odds and Blondel isn’t crazy about the endless concerts and wants to get on with finding King Richard.  He has managed to build a castle with a door that can access any era (or no era at all which is dangerous) and is alternately ducking from and running into the Beaumont Street team.

King Richard has been cooped up in a dank dark dungeon for the last 800 years or so but is almost done with his tunnel, needing only another 5 or 6 years to complete it (it takes time when you have to hide the excavated dirt and the only place to do so is in sacks woven from spider web (as noted, it’s complicated)) when his kind dungeon warden decides to move him to a better cell.  Meanwhile the Pope and Anti-Pope (same person, just separated by death and many centuries) are conspiring with the Beaumont Street gang to do something nefarious.

Needless to say we have lots of adventures and narrow escapes and eventually Blondel frees King Richard, Guy marries Blondel’s sister; we don’t know what happens to the Beaumont Street team or the Popes, but probably they make a fortune one more time.

This was entertaining but wacky and confusing.  If you read it just take it as it comes, ignore the nutty parts and confusing shifts in time, place, identity and motive, and enjoy it.  And remember, you do want to sell those Templar bonds for the 2nd Crusade in 1189, and not wait for 1190!

Grailblazers

Grailblazers started off lighthearted and funny but it quickly got all tangled up and sad and a bit pointless. It reminded me of the dreams you have that seem so real until you wake up and realize how disjointed and floppy they were.

The premise here is that the Knights of the Round Table who were charged to go find the Grail are still looking for it, just not very hard.  In fact they are more interested in delivering pizzas and in whose turn it is to drive the van.  The 32A Beaumont Street finance villains reappear except this time they are from Atlantis and are shysters.  (The 32A Beaumont Street people were on the up-and-up, at least in the sense that their clients kept their money and made more.  The Atlantis people sold securities in companies that magically went bankrupt the next hour.)

Besides the Knights and Atlantis crooks we have a dwarf, another dwarf in a cameo role, Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (albeit both under different names), Merlin (also under different names), Joseph of Arimathea (mostly under his own name) and assorted other villains, fools and ambling-about-the-side-of-the-road people.

I liked this book at first but it got sad as it got goofy and the ending was not at all happy.  The good guys and villains are not so easy to tell apart and we have Simon Magus showing up to magically wrap everything up with a bow.  Overall not one of Holt’s better novels.

Book Review: Charming by Elliott James, Urban Fantasy

by Leave a Comment

Charming (Pax Arcana) is a refreshing take on the fantasy theme of a secret society that protects the world from bugaboos, vampires, werewolves and things that are out to kill us.  The difference is that this secret society, the Knights Templar, isn’t trying to rid the world of dangerous supernatural predators; it is charged with keeping the rest of humanity oblivious to the creatures. The rule is called the Pax Arcana and it is a geas that compels the society to rid the bad guys that get too obvious, such as vampires that start serial killing young women in a rural town.  They are obsessive about maintaining secrecy – and the purity of their group.

The hero is John Charming.  By birth he is a member of the secret society, but he has one big problem.  A werewolf bit his mom when she was 9 months pregnant with John.  She died the first full moon but John was infected.  The society tolerated him until a few years before the story opens when apparently they decided he was too much at risk to turn wolf.  Now John watches his back while he lives in a small rural college town, tending bar under a different name.

World Building

Charming is Elliott James’s first novel and the first in the Pax Arcana series.  The book is set in our world, rural America, so the primary world building is the background for the Pax Arcana, the menagerie of supernatural folk, and making it clear that John Charming is not a supernatural cop nor a Harry Dresden type with plenty of magic power at his disposal.

James dis a great job laying out his world by showing it, with no long explanations.  John Charming narrates the book in the first person, so we see everything through his eyes, which must be a challenging way to describe a whole magic system.  I was impressed with how natural the flow was in the story.  The only part that was challenging to follow was the knights from whom John Charming is hiding; we learned little about how they operated or were organized.

Besides the usual vampires and werewolves we have Naga and Valkeries with other creatures suggested.  It was great to see that the vampires were sexy only if you liked corpse-dead looks and bad breath and that werewolves feel great pain when they transform and that Naga like heat but can burn if you work at it. These were refreshing, and even better, gave the book depth and authenticity.

Characters

Some fantasy novels are all action and setting and unpronouncable words with clip art characters who have zero personality. Charming delivers real people who suffer and feel and rejoice and fear.  Besides John Charming we have Sig, a Valkerie, Molly the Episcopal priest, Ted Cahill the snarky cop, Chauncey Choo, a pot smoking semi-normal guy who got into monster hunting doing his day job of professional exterminator, and Dvornik the Eastern European kresnik, similar to the Knights that John came from.

Let’s look at Choo.  A professional exterminator who got a few houses with more than mundane pests, he teamed up with Molly and Sig to hunt a vampire nest operating in John’s peaceful college town.  If you think about it, who better to see through the Pax Arcana illusion than a professional exterminator?  If you’re killing roaches and rats, focusing on removing icky critters, you will be less susceptible to the Pax Arcana illusion.  The novel is full of these innovative touches.

The villains are equally well done, from the nasty teen aged vampire Anne Marie working on developing a whole nest of vampires and vampire wannabes, to Ivan, to Dvornik and his nephews who played both sides.

Anne Marie has only a few lines but they are great:  “Do you know what it’s like being me?  I’m a damned corpse!  I can’t feel anything except cold, and I’m cold all the time.  Except when I’m drinking blood.”

Series Intro

Charming is the first in the series. Daring is book 2 followed by Fearless which is due out August 11.  This was a series with rich characters and back story and strong foundation for follow up novels.  I am off to reserve Daring now!

Witches Protection Program, Urban Fantasy by Michael Phillip Cash

by Leave a Comment

If you are in the mood for a cute, easy to read e-book then try Witches Proection Program by Michael Cash. I read it as an early reviewer through Net Galley and it’s on Amazon with quite good reviews.

Unfortunately I can’t recommend this book more than halfheartedly.  It is too silly and the characters are two dimensional, caricatures of evil witches, earnest young men, bitter old men and ambitious corporate execs. The plot starts out OK but the last quarter gets ridiculous as do the characters.

The story has two types of witches living among us regular folks, Davina who are good and Willa who are bad.  In this case, thoroughly bad, greedy and wanting to take over the world and put all the men in concentration camps type bad.  That’s the background.

The dialogue is partly good and partly wince-worthy.  That’s the basic problem with the book, it varies between being quite cute and reasonably entertaining and making me wish I never downloaded it.

Guess Graphic Novels Aren’t For Me

by Leave a Comment

I received a copy of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: War Cry Collection (Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher from Net Galley at no charge.  The opinions are mine.

I’ve read every single book and short story Jim Butcher wrote about Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only practicing wizard, so was delighted to get a chance to see this one early and at no charge.  Unfortunately I discovered that it was very difficult to read, not because of a weak plot or lack of interest, but due to the limitations of graphic novels typography.

I simply could not read the words.  My Nook Color can expand a given part of the page, and I tried to do that with a few pages, but it is tedious and when the text was expanded enough to read, the pictures and rest of the page were blocked out.  It’s too hard to follow the story when you have to jump back and forth dialogue bubble by dialogue bubble.

Look at that cover.  Doesn’t this look like a great read, with lots of Harry action, swords and wizardry?  I’d like to read the story but not when it means peering at the page to see the text.  This is a limitation of me, not the novel.

Liesmith, Book 1 of The Wyrd Alis Franklin – Another Loki Novel

by Leave a Comment

I received an advanced reader copy ofLiesmith: Book 1 of The Wyrd<.  Over the past year or so I’ve read several novels that included the Norse god Loki and saw both Thor movies, which induced a disjointed sense of deja vu reading book by new writer Alis Franklin. She brought a unique look to the character with her back story and setting.

It’s refreshing to read a story that treats multi dimensional Loki as a complex, complete character; several books, including Hammered in the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne, treat him more as an insane force of nature, a foil for the good guys. In Liesmith: Book 1 of The Wyrd Franklin presents Loki living in Australia as mega rich founder and owner of the world’s largest IT company, that is when he is not being the non-human, Jotunn / feathered 7 foot tall creature with a tail.

Franklin has done her homework, researching Loki and the Norse tales, and developing a back story to explain Loki’s presence in Australia and his non-participation in Ragnarök.  (She equated Ragnarok to World War 2.)   I found the back story stretched and unconvincing, and I’m not sure why she included it. Possibly it will be relevant in future books, since as we see in the title, Liesmith is meant to be only the first book in a series.

Liesmith hinges on its characters, mild-mannered Sigmund Sussman (who is actually Sigyn, Loki’s wife), Loki himself, Sigmund’s friends and dad. The characters were interesting, but not compelling; ultimately I did not care much about any of them. Sigmund and Loki are at the very beginning of a gay relationship, while meanwhile Sigmund’s friends and dad fight off demons.

I enjoyed the first half of the book quite a bit more than the last half when the plot got twisty.  I didn’t quite follow why Loki and Odin would have done what the shadowy maybe-Odin implied, nor did the switch between Sigmund and Sigyn and Loki.  The plot in the first half was good but the transition from normal, mundane corporate life with Dungeons and Dragons on the side to the nightmarish second half just didn’t work for me.

Given the plot complexities, the strange back story and the good but not great character building, I doubt I will look for the rest of the books in the series. Liesmith was an OK read, maybe a 3 or 3 1/2 stars out of 5. The novel was good enough to finish, but I won’t be keeping it on my Nook to reread.

How to Keep the World From Going Sideways – Resonance by Chris Dolley

by Leave a Comment

After reading Medium Dead (reviewed here) I bought Resonance which appears to be Chris Dolley’s best known and most admired book. This book was more challenging to read.  It is also harder to review as it is hard to put my finger on what about this left me a little lukewarm.

For one thing I love good science fiction or fantasy, am intrigued by alternate worlds, prefer novels that are well-written with interesting characters and good dialogue. Resonance has all these. Yet it also had traits that I don’t usually enjoy: Obsessive/compulsive behavior in the main character, a character that matures far beyond what we have reason to expect, somewhat confusing setting and middling-good ending.

Overall Resonance is excellent. The writing quality is very good. We see the main character Graham through his own eyes and through his awareness of how others respond to him. Graham knows people think he’s weird, unsocial and probably retarded. What Graham knows is that it’s important for him to follow certain rituals in order to keep the world more or less in running order. Graham has it backwards, it is not the world that flops around but he. Graham moves among alternate worlds.

One interesting side note is how the villain sees the alternate worlds as a source of profit. He isn’t interested in moving goods and people, trading or exploiting, but in harvesting the combined experience of 2 billion worlds to develop breakthrough products. That’s a unique view and probably more realistic way to profit from alternate worlds, if they do exist and if we are ever able to talk to them.

Resonance felt incoherent to me at times. I think that was meant to be the case since Graham would experience the world as constantly changing, but it was unsettling and made it harder to read.

I do recommend Resonance, but be aware that it is unsettling to read and not as fun or as fast as Medium Dead.  Be sure you have several hours free and try to finish in a few days.
.