More Books than Time

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

Kingfisher – Fantasy with Subtle Magic – Patricia McKillip

by Leave a Comment

Patricia McKillip is one of my favorite authors for her atmospheric novels that combine down to earth characters with love and forgiveness, wispy magic, inexplicable happenings, good and evil and pure imagination.  Kingfisher uses the Grail myth as a theme on top of a world that combines magic in the foggy coast, a basilisk cum temptress, humor, a traffic-snarled bridge, a castle’s kitchen plus characters seeking for themselves and their hearts.

If this sounds confusing, well, the novel is a bit.  I find McKillip’s plots seem to have small (or large) holes that I simply overlook, jump in the torrent and move along with the characters.  We get bewildered together. (I re-read Kingfisher as I do most of her novels and the plot was clearer and more seamless the second time.)

Kingfisher is no exception.  Don’t expect detailed explanations of how the world is set up, or seamless transitions.  Things happen.  Characters do things, sometimes for reasons even they don’t understand.  It’s real life.

People

Our main character Pierce is a straight arrow who somehow finds himself taking a knife from an inn (actually he left his credit card so it wasn’t technically stealing – or so he told himself).  Pierce and his brother Val are the down-to-earth characters that McKillip uses to move the story along, while the main plot revolves bastard prince Daimon and the secondary plot has Carrie contending with Stillwater for the soul of the town and family.

Kingfisher is about people, with magic and its world providing part of the challenge and decorating the main thrust, which is the tangle between family, loyalty, love, forgiveness and ambition.

Daimon’s story is love fueled by enchantment augmented with glamour and sex, meant to be strong enough to set him against his father, the king whom he loves. His family – his real family, not his biological mother’s family – sends Dame Scotia to watch over him and she entangles herself in his dreams enough to break them both free of the enchantment.

Magic and World Building

McKillip’s magic is understated.  Pierce and Val are children of a powerful sorceress and she works magic to free them from the basilisk who holds their father. Chef Stillwater uses magic and malice to imprison an entire town feeding them food that looks beautiful but is empty of flavor and nutrition.  The Ravenhold women use glamour to enchant first the king, then his son.

Everyone accepts magic as real and powerful, but we never see how it works or whether only some have the ability.  It’s a fact of life, not the be-all and end-all of the novel.

Kingfisher’s world is our world complete with cell phones and bad traffic plus magic and a plethora of gods and goddesses.  McKillip doesn’t spend time telling us much about this world beyond letting us feel its familiarity.

We are in the Kingdom of Wyvernhold, which has knights and tournaments on special occasions; think of England but with the full-color ceremonial trappings that have meaning, and are not just decorations. The king mentions that one reason he wants to promote the Quest is that now with times so good, some of his subjects are restless and looking for trouble, wanting their own tiny domains’ independence.

Summary

Most of McKillip’s novels have gorgeous covers and Kingfisher’s is a bit blah; maybe she felt the modern setting needed a more modern cover picture.  That’s about my only quibble.  Some Amazon reviewers complained about the lack of a clear magic system or more explicit world building but I don’t agree.

Kingfisher is about people caught up in snarls due to love and loyalty with magic adding twists.  It is a fantasy because it is set in another world and there is some magic in the background.  I always feel tossed in the middle of McKillip’s fantasy novels, like I should know these people, these situations.  Kingfisher is no exception.  It is overall excellent.

5 Stars

Wheat That Springeth Green by J F Powers – A Priest’s Life and Growth

by Leave a Comment

I read Wheat That Springeth Green by J F Powers several years ago and the characters stuck in my mind like a song that you hear every now and then and each time stop to listen.

The novel follows Joe Hackett through his youthful sympathy for older priest Father Day, to his teenaged sexual encounters with the girl and maid next door (complete with syphilis) through the seminary with his pig-headed pursuit of his image of God, to his work as the Catholic pastor in Ingenook.

Along the way Joe struggles to live a life of virtue, to help others reach sanctity, to be a good man and a good priest.  He tries a hair shirt and hours on his knees in the seminary but is never able to achieve the immediate and obvious union with God that he seeks.  He fights disillusionment and an ever-growing beer belly, parishioners’ stinginess and the constant battle between holiness and worldliness.

Writing Style

J. F. Powers combined stream-of-conscious with modest narrative, all from Joe’s point of view, and abrupt changes of scenery and time.  The book would be a little easier to follow with a bit more narrative.  For example, Joe finally gets assigned as a pastor to his own parish, but we have to surmise that by the change in tone and topic in a new chapter.

The stream-of-conscious thoughts are Joe wrestling with a problem, neatly listing the pros and cons, and sometimes the dialogue he wants to have but cannot.  The archbishop increases the assessment against his parish, but Joe feels bound to not make money requests to his parish.  He implemented a flat fee concept with the promise that he wouldn’t ask for extra funds.

Joe imagines discussing this with the Arch, all with a happy ending.  Instead he and his assistant divide up the DPs (deliquent parishioners who don’t give) and visit some each evening to ask the families to live up to their stewardship responsibilities.  (We can imagine how well that works.  On average in any parish a third give regularly, a third give once in a while and a third never give.)

Characters

Joe is inherently kind and thoughtful, not what one would expect reading his famous question posed in seminary “How do we make virtue as attractive as sex?”  As a boy Joe sees his pastor, “Dollar Bill” treat his assistant Father Day rudely and be greedy with his parish.  As an adult Joe seeks out Father Day, makes him his confessor, treats him kindly and with great respect.

The most striking example was with Catfish Tooney, sorry, Monsignor Tooney, Joe’s former classmate and general pain in the neck in the diocesan chancery.  Joe built a nice rectory in his parish and wants the archbishop to bless it, but must go through Tooney who of course says no.  Later the archbishop asks Joe in person why he hasn’t had him out to bless the rectory and Joe bites his tongue and struggles for days to find a way to answer without calling out Tooney.  Most of us wouldn’t bother protecting a guy who’s been a jerk for years.

Humor with Seriousness

Wheat that Springeth Green is funny even while treating serious topics like God, faith, virtue, money, sex and dreams.  Joe has a good sense of humor and Powers does a good job showing us the funny moments, both inside and outside of Joe’s head.  We see Joe evolve from a precocious youngster to an obnoxiously self-important seminarian to an earnest priest dedicated to his own holiness and hopefully that of the people he serves, to a priest who compromises with the world to one who re-ignites his own faith.  Along the way we smile and maybe even laugh a bit at life.

Fantasy, Horror and Suspense All In One: The Reckoning by Carsten Stroud

by Leave a Comment

The Reckoning is that rarest of books, a trilogy finale that stands on its own merits.  It is Book 3 in The Niceville Trilogy yet I found it easy to follow, enjoyable and readable.  I have not read either of the first two books in the series.

The Reckoning combines mystery with horror and a strong dash of supernatural fantasy.  People in Niceville are dying in horrific, gruesome ways, whole families are murdered, their killer dies cut in half by a shifting stalactite.  Thankfully author Carsten Stroud spares us details – no gory scenes or dripping blood – leaving the horror part secondary to the mystery.

Stroud has a gift for bringing disparate elements together and making the whole into a readable novel. Setting and characters are interesting and realistic.

The setting is Niceville, well described and the book includes a map, a ranch several miles out and a Florida beach house.  Stroud describes the settings well enough that you understand and follow the actions as characters travel around town and between the town and ranch, and town and beach house.

The main character is Nick Kavanaugh who is responsible to investigate a horrible murder of a Niceville family, and who with his wife Kate is fostering a 14-year old boy, Rainey Teague, brutally kidnapped in a prior book.  Rainey acts like a normal 14-year old but Nick can’t quite shake the idea that Rainey is far more than he appears.

One of the most interesting characters is Coker, an ex-cop wanted for murder and robbery.  He and his girlfriend are enjoying their beach house under an assumed name when they hear screams on top of an already-raucous party.  Reluctantly they call the police who find the usual, drugs, booze and underage girls.  The young men decide to revenge themselves and attack Coker.  Bad move as he disables and nearly cripples two of them.  This spirals into a game of cat and mouse with the mob, the FBI, a smart widow and assorted stupid side kicks.

Characters reference past events from the first two novels but Stroud provides enough back story that we can fill in the blanks without reading the earlier books.  He does an excellent job, the “bring them up to speed” parts are transparent, let out as part of the story, not patched in with some obvious add on.

Stroud’s writing style is good, with good pacing, reasonable dialogue, interesting characters.  I didn’t care for the events on the ranch or former asylum – nor did they seem particularly germane to this novel.  I think Stroud may have included them to tie up loose ends from the first two books.

Overall I recommend this if you enjoy suspense novels or supernatural suspense.  The fantasy elements are there to serve the plot and let the supernatural suspense lead the show.

4+ Stars

Beware Malls Overrun with Demons! Long Hot Summoning by Tanya Huff

by Leave a Comment

Long Hot Summoning: The Keeper’s Chronicles #3 is the third book in Tanya Huff’s fun Keepers series set in Ontario, Canada.  The back story is that a few people, called Keepers, patrol the world and keep it safe from otherworld, aka demon incursions.  Claire with her cat Austin saved the world in the first book and now younger sister Diana has graduated from high school and ready to take on the Keeper role with her cat Sam.

The Long Hot Summoning has much of the fun that Summon the Keeper had and second book in the series, The Second Summoning, just misses.  Diana answers the summons to a mall in Kingston where the evil powers are trying to overlay their hellish mall onto the real one.  Unfortunately they are very close and sister Claire is a bit distracted trying to save Dean and his hotel guests from a mummy who is sucking their lives to power her own.  Diana gets help from mall elves, a magic mirror and a pink plastic magic wand.

The plot is fun, with multiple subplots that do not distract from the main story.  Can Diana save the mall kids, Arthur (yes, that Arthur), Claire, the cats and herself?  Can she shut down the hellish segue into our world?  Will Osiris weigh Claire’s heart and find it heavier than the feather and doom her?  Will Lance shut down mummy Meryat?  Can she save the magic mirror Jack?

Claire’s, Lance’s and Austin’s characters are well done, although Diana’s and the minor ones are a bit fla, although even the less well-developed people are funny and you can imagine meeting them.  Diana grows up a bit, begins to accept The Rules, although she still wants to bend them every which way.  Of course any book where the cats are intelligent (as we know they are) and play major roles in saving the Earth has got to be good!

Overall I recommend The Long Hot Summoning and the first book, Summon the Keeper if you enjoy fantasy with a bit of a bite and strong characters, humor and good writing.  This is a fast read, perfect for a late evening or take it to the porch this summer and enjoy!

4 Stars for The Long Hot Summoning and Summon the Keeper gets 5 stars.

Maeve Binchy A Week In Winter – Meet Interesting People

by Leave a Comment

Maeve Binchy died shortly after finishing A Week In Winter, a series of character vignettes connected by a holiday week in a refurbished house on the west coast of Ireland.  We follow the hotel’s owner, her employees, and the guests who come for her opening week.

Owner Chicky Starr starts the novel.  She is the girl who fell in love foolishly and followed her guy to New York where he eventually dumped her.  Chicky was determined to not crawl home – her family was horrified that she left to live with a man without marriage – and made a life for herself in New York.  In fact Chicky made two lives, one the real situation, a pastry chef and boardinghouse worker, and the other her fantasy life full of love with her husband Walter (the guy who dumped her) and their fun on the town.  Eventually she goes back home to Stoneybridge, buys the Stone House from Miss Sheedy and sets out to make it as a hotelier.

Chicky is determined, interested in people without wanting to pry or volunteer advice, hard working, careful with money.  She is living a lie, having told everyone that “husband Walter” died in a car accident, but it doesn’t seem to bother her.  It’s as though she managed to disconnect herself from the years in America and build something brand new, albeit on a shaky foundation.

Mrs. Binchly does a grand job letting us see the people behind the names.  We read about their friends and backgrounds, the people they loved and those they disappointed.  The guests range from an American movie star to an icy school mistress to a married couple that makes their days bright by winning contests.

The Walls won their week as second prize in contest where first prize was a week in Paris.  They spent the time before the trip and the first day or so lamenting their lost Paris week.  They didn’t feel like enjoying their week until they learned the first prize winners were having a miserable week, with none of the promised Parisian delights and an unpleasant stay in a 3rd rate room in the prize hotel.  Then they decided they won a worthy prize, relaxed and enjoyed Stone House.

The author’s genius was in making the people come to life with a series of small, gentle stories that show them both for good and ill.  Some of the characters have dubious moral backgrounds, but all are shown in a kind, warm-hearted light.  In fact the only character shown with no redeeming qualities is the school mistress, who is so self-closed that we never get beyond her rigor.

Overall I enjoyed this.  A A Week In Winter was easy to pick up late in the evening and read about a person or two, then put down until the next evening.  There wasn’t a lot of plot or action among the characters as the action occurred mostly before or after the week’s holiday.  Each character, except Miss Nell Howe, uses the week to come to peace with a situation or to make a life-turning decision.   The book was peaceful and interesting.

4 Stars

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!

To Catch a Bad Guy by Marie Astor – Fun, Romantic Suspense

by Leave a Comment

Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble offer To Catch a Bad Guy (Janet Maple Series Book 1) for free (always an attractive feature) but what caught my attention was the cover.  Who could resist such a cute dog?

Janet Maple has a new job as Assistant General Counsel at Bostoff Securities, working for her old friend and semi-rival Lisa.  Once Janet arrives she quickly wonders why the company hired her.  Lisa herself isn’t busy and Janet has nothing to do.  Then external lawyer Tom Wyman shows up to zip her through Bostoff’s legal structure – which is extraordinarily complex – and Janet begins to wonder just what is going on at Bostoff.

Janet does not want to rock the boat, but being a smart lady recognizes that she, as a lawyer for the brokerage, is on the hook for the firm’s legal actions and discovers the firm is missing client paperwork.  Management tells her to to forget about it, but Janet suspects something is wrong, and with her sense for crooked books honed after years in the New York District Attorney’s office she senses things aren’t quite as rosy as they appear.

Janet quickly finds herself embroiled with the cute IT guy, dodging  Tom Wyman, digging just a bit under the surface, and worried sick about her friend Lisa and Lisa’s fiance.

Overall To Catch A Bad Guy is cute, fun, a fast read that catches your imagination.  The characters are interesting and I felt for Janet once she realized she was in a sticky situation.  Don’t expect deep character building or complex themes but do expect a fun couple of hours.

Author Marie Astor used To Catch a Bad Guy (Janet Maple Series Book 1) to set the stage for a couple of sequels featuring the same characters, the budding romances and have our friends take care of the bad guys.  I enjoyed To Catch a Bad Guy enough that I purchased two of the follow up novels.

Creepy Scary Snoopiness – The God’s Eye View by Barry Eisler

by Leave a Comment

The God’s Eye View starts off mild, then builds suspense at the same time we start caring about the characters.

Evie Gallagher like any mother, wants to take care of her young son, Dash.  Dash is deaf and Evie is divorced, with her ex-husband only peripherally involved so Evie needs her job.  Evie is good at her work and enjoys the technical challenges and the trust and access to her boss, Anders.  Evie’s job?  She’s an analyst at the NSA and her boss is the director.

Anders is also fanatical about building complete surveillance, complete information access on everybody and complete ability to track and monitor everyone.  He’s amoral and manipulative and sees everything he does as good for the country.  In other words he is one scary, creepy menace.

The Plot

Evie keeps her head down and does her job developing a tracking system that leads her to discover a high up NSA stationed in Turkey has contacted a “subversive” journalist.  Evie reports that contact to Anders and also asks him whether her report about a CIA analyst in contact with a different “subversive” had anything to do with the analyst’s reported suicide the next day.  Anders denies it, but she can’t quite trust him – but she does not want to suspect him.

The plot builds from here.  Anders calls in his favorite nasty guys to take down the two men in Turkey, but one of the take downs, meant to be a straightforward kidnapping/murder, backfires when the kidnappers go public with their captive.  Meanwhile Anders discovers that the high NSA official, now dead, very likely knew of his pet project, God’s Eye.  Anders goes into high gear to stomp out any possibility of his project becoming public.

The book moves fast.  Evie is smart and connects the dots all too soon for Anders who orders her death.  Unfortunately for him, one of his nasty guys, Manus, has fallen for Evie and protects her.  Anders spins out of control, not caring who or how many people he has to kill in order to protect his big secrets.

The end is satisfying but not conclusive.  Big Brother is still out there, just a bit less virulent.

Characters

The people are well done, especially the main antagonists, Evie and Ander.  Eisler shows how someone like Anders, a decorated veteran, patriot, dedicated to serving his country, could go so far into the dark side.  Evie is easy to understand.  She’s smart, she enjoys being good at her work, she loves her son and needs the best job she can get in order to send him to the special school.  The two nasties are less detailed, sufficient for the story.

Backstory

The God’s Eye View is darn scary.  We know we don’t get the full story in the news and we know we can’t trust the government to be the shining city on the hill we all hope it to be.  Author Barry Eisler uses headlines and the fallout from the Eric Snowden affair to craft an excellent story.  With luck it will help us all question what we read and see.

Overall I’d give The God’s Eye View 4 stars.  Very well done, reasonably enjoyable and scary as heck.

Dear County Agent Guy – Dairy Farmer Wisdom and Wit – Jerry Nelson

by Leave a Comment

Jerry Nelson says he got his start as a humor columnist when he sent a letter to the county agent asking for help removing cattails, ducks and tourists from his flooded field one wet North Dakota spring.  The agent suggested he try writing a column for farm magazines.  Jerry was successful and now with Dear County Agent Guy: Calf Pulling, Husband Training, and Other Curious Dispatches from a Midwestern Dairy Farmer we non farm magazine readers can enjoy the his work too.

Jerry Nelson writes simply and from himself and the result is a series of funny articles that read from the heart, not at all contrived.  His columns range from memories growing up, courting his wife, suggesting his wife’s obstetrician use a calf puller on the slow-to-arrive oldest child and thoughts about raising kids, thrift and farming.  I enjoyed them.

The columns are funny because Nelson finds humor in simple, every day things.  He is not mean nor contemptuous nor snide nor sarcastic.  There is a wide streak of potty humor with a couple stories about changing diapers, handling manure, not bathing and using the side of the barn as a convenient substitute for the indoor bathroom.  Even though I’m not crazy about potty humor the stories were in good fun and a couple of the jokes were pretty funny.

Nelson never preaches or comes across as advising people on how to run their lives, or to save money or to enjoy the outdoors and friends and family.  Nonetheless it’s obvious that these virtues are among the reasons he is happy and if anyone wants to emulate him, well, they got a few good suggestions.

Dear County Agent Guy will appeal to anyone who enjoys the outdoors, not just farmers.  Nelson explains the farming background with minimal detail, enough to clarify what he’s talking about but not so much that we readers feel we need to become dairy farmers to enjoy his work.

I received an advance copy through NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.  The E book could use some copy editing to clean up the format.  The overall writing needs little editing – for one thing these were taken from magazine columns and for another Nelson’s style is good and his sentences, spelling and such are already readable.

Overall I would give this 4 stars.

Suspense and Romance, Deceived by Irene Hannon

by 1 Comment

Deceived is the first novel I’ve read by Irene Hannon but it won’t be the last.  The library had Deceived on an end cap where it caught my eye.  I almost didn’t read it because the blurb sounded melodramatic.

Synopsis

Kate Marshall lost her husband and 4 year old son in a boating accident three years ago.  Police on the scene found her husband’s body floating without a life jacket but never found the small boy’s body.  Kate was especially distraught because she asked her husband to always use the life jackets.

Three years later Kate is going down the escalator in the mall when she sees a 7 year old blond boy going up.  Despite believing her son is dead, Kate feels certain the boy could be her son, Kevin, because she hears him ask for a poppeysicle, the same thing her Kevin used to say.

Kate enlists a private detective who finds the boy with his supposed adoptive father.  One thing leads to another and we finally have a happy ending.

Suspenseful

Hannon could have taken this story several different directions and we aren’t quite sure whether Kate is on the right track until about halfway through.   She lets the suspense build gradually.  Will the boy be Kate’s missing son?  Is Kate dreaming or going insane?  Will the supposed dad bolt?  Or kill his almost-girlfriend?

The suspense is mild in some ways.  We don’t have a mad killer or terrorist plot, just a man desperate to have a son back, a mother grieving and hoping, a growing love affair.  Once we see that Kate is not nuts and her son could be alive, the questions then become how and why.  And for investigator Conner Sullivan, how to prove enough plausibility that he can get DNA testing.

Characters

Deceived is not a coming of age story or a deep character study.  The three main characters, Kate, Conner and supposed dad Greg Sanders are convincing three dimensional people.  Kate and Greg were the most fleshed out.  The other characters are believable and done well enough to be more than backdrops.

Summary

Another point is the book has minimal violence or gore and no sex scenes.  I found both refreshing.

The full title of this novel is Deceived: A Novel (Private Justice) (Volume 3), telling me there are more books by Irene Hannon to seek out.   Our library has several, next on my list to check out.