Book Review – From a High Tower

Title: From a High Tower

Author: Mercedes Lackey

Format: eBook

Year Published: 2015

From a High Tower is the tenth book in Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters series. As with most of the books, it’s based upon fairy tales/folklore – in this case, Rapunzel. Or well, it starts out with Rapunzel, but then it takes a hard left into Germanic tellings of the Wild West, based upon the books of Karl May, an author I’ve never heard of (not unexpected, as Lackey includes a foreword in the front of the book to give an overview of May’s books).

The novel begins with a heavy focus on the Rapunzel story-line: a husband with a heavily-pregnant wife, who steals food – specifically rampion – from an old, run-down, apparently abandoned house. He is caught, but in return for the food, the child his wife is carrying is demanded in return.

Unlike most versions of the story, Rapunzel – also known as Giselle – is not freed from the evil witch by a handsome prince, or cast out once it is discovered that she has been consorting with him. Instead, the evil witch is an Earth Master – kind and caring (though I spent the *entire* book waiting for something bad to come out about her) and the handsome prince – a rapist who wants Giselle’s power as an Air Master.

The story-proper begins as Giselle is traveling from town to town, entering and winning shooting contests to support herself. Done in the guise of a man, this plan goes awry when she is forced to kill an army officer – eventually resulting her joining a traveling Wild West Show as one of the stars. Not only does the show need her ability to shoot, her magical abilities are not out of place either.

They are joined by Rosamund, a Hunt Master of the Bruderschaft, a local organization that handles magical problems and creatures (and, had I read the series in order, I would have ‘met’ Rosamund in Blood Red) and together they travel with the show.

They have several adventures on the road, and end up wintering at Giselle’s tower, where the ‘handsome prince’ who had previously attacked her attempts to get her and her power again, this time with the help of his family. They are defeated with the combined power of Giselle, Rosamund, and the other two magicians with the show.

I’m… lukewarm on this book. I enjoy the series, for the most part (though honestly, the earlier books are my favorites), but felt that this one relied heavily upon the knowledge of Karl May’s books and therefore, I didn’t connect to it. I also dislike the recent trend in the books where the main character has a person who ends up being a romantic interest for them, but they barely interact or seem to connect.

I like the learning of magic that happens in the book, but there is very little of it, in total, and most of the magic Giselle performs is little, and things she already knows. I also felt that Giselle stayed naïve for far too long in the story, and could have done with far more seasoning earlier on.

Still, once I got going on the book it went fast, so I’ll rate this one 3/5 stars.

Book Review – A Local Habitation

Title: A Local Habitation

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: Paperback

Year Published: 2010

The second of the Toby Daye series, A Local Habitation sends Toby out of San Francisco to Fremont, CA to check on her liege’s niece. Toby is sent off with Quentin, a teenaged foster at Lord Sylvester’s, as her backup.  What they discover when they get there is death – not only death, but murder, and suddenly Toby must figure out what is going on, before she’s next.

This book has a different feel than Rosemary and Rue does – while Toby is run ragged (again), she’s clawing her way out of her depression finger by finger, and therefore things seem less to happen *to* her, and more like she’s actively inciting them. (But, once again, how many times can one character get “mortally” wounded? Although in this case, that actually becomes part of a plot point.)

The murder/mystery part of the plot is hard for me to explain, as it doesn’t really follow any kind of “investigating” really on the Toby’s part – at least, not according to all the detective stories I’ve read over the years. She stumbles on the answer almost by accident – or at least, until she can’t ignore the clues anymore.

I didn’t enjoy this book necessarily as much as I’ve enjoyed others of the series, and some of that was the character of Alex, as Toby seemed to ignore all the hints about who his was until far too late – I called it early on. (Not necessarily his heritage, but the other big secret he had.) So every time there was a scene with him, I wanted to shake her.

On the flip side, I did like April – the Dryad daughter of January, who now has a tree made up of a computer and as such, has a very different outlook to everything that’s happening.

I also loved that Toby called the night-haunts – creatures that “eat” Fae bodies and leave behind human-simulations for the humans to find and see. It sets a up plot events for the future, and it also is exactly the kind of reckless action we expect her to take.

Plus it’s a great scene.

Overall, not my favorite book, but certainly an enjoyable read. 3/5 stars.

Book Review – Pocket Apocalypse

Title: Pocket Apocalypse

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: Paperback

Year Published: 2015

Pocket Apocalypse is the fourth book in the InCryptid series, and the second to follow Alexander Price. The book starts out with Alex’s girlfriend asking him about werewolves, so it basically starts with a bang.

As it turns out, Alex knows a lot about werewolves – he’s encountered them before – but what he tells Shelby doesn’t reassure her. Her family, who handles the cryptid population in Australia, have started to encounter werewolves. In a place where they’ve never been before, which means that they have a huge problem. So before he really knows it, Alex finds himself on a flight bound to face down one of his biggest fears. And Shelby’s family.

Alex finds that things are run very differently in Australia, and it’s not made any easier by the fact that Shelby’s father hates him. Unfortunately, he’s about to face a new danger – on a trip out, he’s bitten by a werewolf and now must face the danger that he will become a mindless, raging beast, unless he isn’t actually infected or he manages to find a cure.

The story keeps ramping up the tension, but does so in a believable way. I did see two of the major plot points coming (the leader of the werewolves and the “surprise” person who had been bitten), but that may have been because I’m powering my way through the author’s books. There were less twists in this than the previous book, as well.

An excellent offering to the series – 3/5 stars.

Book Review – Half-Off Ragnarok

Title: Half-Off Ragnarok

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: Paperback

Year Published: 2014

The third book in Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, Half-Off Ragnarok is the first of two books focusing on Alexander Price. I was very eager to get to his book, because I loved his interactions with Verity in her books. I didn’t enjoy the books quite as much as I expected. (Not to say that they were bad, but Alex didn’t grab me quite as much as Verity did. I think because he doesn’t present emotionally the way Verity does.)

In Half-Off Ragnarok, Alex and his maybe-yes-maybe-no girlfriend Shelby find themselves in the middle of a series of murders. But not regular murders – no, the murderer is definitely a cryptid. As Alex works to solve the murders, he discovers that Shelby isn’t as unaware of his world as he thought.

I figured out who the murderer was several scenes before Alex and Shelby did but I did not figure out his backstory. That was as much a surprise to me as it was to them.

I enjoyed the story. Alex thinks very differently than Verity does, and once I got used to that, it flowed very smoothly. I also liked that Sarah, Alex and Verity’s cousin, is still healing from what she had to do to save Verity in Midnight Blue-Light Special. There’s not a “magic fix” for this, even in a world with magic.

I also liked that Alex’s relationship with the crytid community is so differently than Verity’s. He’s still trying to protect them, but his focus is also on studying them scientifically, so rather than connecting to them emotionally at first, he connects to them via their physicality.

Equally, I enjoyed that the twists about the murderer kept coming, right up until the end. a good book, and enjoyable in the series. 3/5 stars.

Book Review – Midnight Blue-Light Special

Title: Midnight Blue-Light Special

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: Paperback

Year Published: 2013

The sequel to Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-Light Special follows Verity Price as she approaches the end of her time in New York, and the deadline for her decisions about which life she’s going to choose – her dancing career, or the family business. Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing going wrong for her. Her maybe-boyfriend shows up with news: the Covenant is head to New York to “evaluate” him and to “purge” New York of anything non-human.

Not exactly something Verity will stand for. Now not only is it a choice between worlds, it’s a fight for her life and the lives of all those she protects. To make matters worse, one of the Covenant members is a distant cousin, who might be a better match for Verity than anybody else the Covenant could throw her way.

To be honest, I never bought that Verity was going to walk away from the family business. Even though she loved dancing, it never felt as important to her as she thought it was – some of that might have been because the focus of the books is on the cryptid communities and their problems, so we get very little focus on the dancing, but even when we have Verity and dancing, it seems more like we’re told how much she loves it, rather than having it be shown to us in the text. So when she realizes (about mid-way through, give or take) that she’s obviously going to chose her family’s career for her, it didn’t feel like the sudden realization I think the author was going for.

And in a similar vein, I also never bought that Dominic was going to return to his pre-Verity teachings and betray her and her family. Not just because he was in love with her (although that was part of his reasoning), but because his world-view had shifted and there was no way it was shifting back.

Interestingly, although the book is written in first-person, there is a portion written in Verity’s cousin Sarah’s POV – still first-person. It’s necessary for the way the book is told – Verity is captured and knocked unconscious, so for there to be tension for the reader as well as the other characters, we can’t know what is going on with her at first – but I wonder if it could have been told in a way that didn’t necessitate a change in POV. The two girls do have distinct voices and very different world-views, but I pretty much prefer my head-hopping to happen in third-person.

Despite some minor issues I have, the climax of the book makes up for a lot. Verity is tortured and the after-affects of that torture are not just pushed away when she tries to escape. (And the whole escape scene takes place while she is stark-naked, which is also not a thing that really happens.)

All in all, I didn’t think this was the strongest book, but the high points were very fun. 3/5 stars.

Book Review – Closer to Home

Author: Mercedes Lackey

Title: Closer to Home

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2015

Closer to Home is the second book in the Herald Spy series, and a much stronger book than any in the preceding Collegium Chronicles. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t make it one of the best Valdemar books.

In Closer to Home, Mags and Amily are settling into their new roles – Mags has his little band of informants and is working hard to establish them in places where they’ll gain more information for him. Amily is starting to settle into her role as the King’s Own. Her uncertainty in the role is understandable, and rang true, but so did the way she began to take it over and make it hers. I also enjoyed the idea she has of creating the Queen’s Handmaidens, and using them to become her own network of spies.

Neither are able to relax in their roles, however, as a threat from one of their allies has arisen. With a child King on the throne of Menmellith, a rebellion has sprung up. A rebellion supplied with weapons with a Valdemarian mark. Now it’s a race against time to find out who is actually supplying the weapons, before war starts in earnest.

Mags is once again forced to go back to the mines where he grew up, taking along one of Amily’s new spies and the man who had trained his mentor, hoping to find the information that they need to stop the war.

One of the big downsides of the book, to me, is the return of Kirball. (Because seriously – why? I was so happy Mags was no longer involved in the sport!) (This may be a flaw in me – I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Quidditch scenes in Harry Potter, and the Podracing scene in Star Wars makes me want to kill somebody.)

Another thing that annoyed me was the way Mags kept going on about how everything he was seeing at the Rolmer mines was in comparison to the way it had been at the mines he’d lived at. I understood that his upbringing had a very negative impact on him, but the way he kept going “but Cole Pieter had done this so differently” and never really seemed to fully grasp that he was, maybe, wrong rubbed me the wrong way. Had it been presented more in a manner of “Mags knew what to look for due to his experiences and so he looked for those types of clues” it might have been easier to swallow.

Amily has very little to do in this book – she’s essentially spinning her wheels, training and building up her network and working with Mags’ little groups/projects, but most of that feels like building for the future, rather than helping in the here and now.

While I enjoyed Tuck (their new inventor friend), his introduction feels more like a way to give our heroes tools that they might not otherwise have, or to put it another way, it seems like the author saw a spy show, went “oh, those are cool” and then worked out a way to put them in without pausing to consider if they were really necessary. (I felt much the same way about Mags’ assassin relatives and their martial arts skills.)

The ending felt… odd. Somewhat abrupt, with a character who was barely introduced and then is overcome fairly easily. There were several loose threads that I don’t believe the author will clean up in the next book and will therefore irk me.

All in all, the book didn’t wow me, but it also didn’t make me want to throw it across the room. 3/5 stars.

Book Review – Devoted in Death

Title: Devoted in Death

Author: J.D. Robb

Format: E-book

Year Published: 2015

As I believe I’ve established before, I have a fondness for Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb in her In Death series. Not exactly high literature, sometimes they have awesome plot twists, and they’re always a quick, easy read.

Devoted is the newest offering in the world. Unfortunately, there are several routes that the mystery can take, and this book takes my least favorite form – the one where we learn who the murderer is right off the bat and then it’s just a matter of our stalwart heroes figuring it out and then catching them. I much prefer to be able to try to solve the mystery by the clues presented (which is why my second-favorite mystery style that comes up in this series – the “Eve has a hunch who it is but won’t tell anybody who or why and we don’t get enough details to figure it out ourselves” thing – drives me crazy).

The murderers in this are subtly different enough from Robbs’ other murderers that it didn’t feel like  a rehash of an old plot, and there was less of the Check-list Of Things To Be Included (Mavis is mentioned, Feeney makes a small appearance, but no Trina/Nadine/Eve’s past focus).

The story starts with the murderers’ first kill – by accident, but it sparks something in them. Then they make their way to NYC and onto the radar of Eve Dallas. Their first kill was a young cellist, and I almost prefer the stories where the victim has nobody to care about him, since watching lives be shattered by the news is a gut punch. (Strangely, I get less of this in cop shows – maybe because we usually pick up in the middle of an interview.)

Fortunately, it doesn’t take Dallas long to pick up that this kill isn’t the first, and soon begins to trace the path back to where it started. As the kills cross state-lines, the FBI is involved, but they’re only barely on-screen, mostly preferring to follow their own line of investigation (which is, as usual, proven wrong. This is one of the quibbles I have with Dallas – she’s really good at her job, and rarely, if ever, is she wrong about who the murderer is, and if she’s in disagreement with another agency, she’s ALWAYS right. Let her be wrong, once in a while! Fortunately, she’s really bad at personal relationships, so she’s a bit more of a balanced character than she appears.)

Helped out by a small-town deputy, Dallas and her crew manage to track down the murderers and rescue the two people that they took. Like most of the secondary victims, I was rooting for them and was grateful that they survived (barely, in one case). (Unlike in Thankless in Death, where the secondary victim I wanted to live didn’t and the one I didn’t have strong feelings about did.)

As a side note, the more I read her work, the more I am convinced that Robb has a deep geek side. She sneaks a Pratchett reference into this book (at which I squeaked. Loudly), did an excellent job of showing the geeky world with Fantasy In Death, and when Mal met Kaylee in one of her romance novels I nearly died laughing.

Overall, while not one of my favorites, the more unusual plot and lack of filler puts this a solid 3/5 stars.

Book Review – The Liar

Title: The Liar

Author: Nora Roberts

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2015

Yes, yet another Nora Roberts novel! (They’re a guilty pleasure, what can I say?)

So, The Liar is the newest offering from Roberts, which explains why it took me a month to get it in from the library. Shelby has been recently widowed and has discovered that her husband isn’t at all who she thought he was. She retreats home to Tennessee, taking her daughter to her family, and settles in, trying to overcome the debt her husband has left her in and ignoring all the mysteries of his past, all the while slowly falling in love with a new man.

Unfortunately, her husband’s past isn’t done with her. Starting with a PI who follows her from Philadelphia to Tennessee, more trouble follows as one of her husband’s ‘associates’ tells her what he was really involved, and then ends up dead. Slowly, the tangled web of lies that her husband built start to fall, and Shelby learns the truth.

So the big plot twist of the story (revealed in the last thirty pages), I called by the end of the first chapter. Some of this may be because I’ve read/watched a lot of detective stories, but this one felt *so* obvious I couldn’t believe that it never even came up as a possibly with the characters. So that felt a little less true-to-life.

I liked Shelby, and I liked Griff (her new love interest) but Roberts has started making her heroes a bit *too* perfect (I know – what else can I expect in a romance novel). Griff is always perfect – he knows when to push and when to step back; he knows how to win over not only Shelby but her daughter, and it all adds up to a rather boring specimen, to be honest.

As usual, Roberts’ skill with interesting characters is showcased in the side-characters – with Shelby’s best friend and her new beau; with Shelby’s mother and grandmother; with the girl who’s hated Shelby since they were girls and her actions once Shelby returns home.

Nothing spectacular, but nothing horrible either. 3/5 stars.

Book Review – Maplecroft

Title: Maplecroft

Author: Cherie Priest

Format: Trade Paperback

Year Published: 2014

I discovered this book through one of John Scalzi’s Big Idea pieces. It sounded interesting enough, so I added it to my library queue. It… wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

Part of the problems I had with the book were due that misunderstanding, while others were due to technical issues with the story itself. This is truly a “your mileage will vary” story, and many people will find that this book works for them for precisely the same reasons that it didn’t work for me.

Maplecroft is the story of Lizzie Borden, star of the skipping-rope rhyme “Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one…” (which, truth be told, I’d never heard before reading this book). But this isn’t the story of that murder – this is the story of what takes place after Lizzie has been exonerated.

Which actually makes it kind of frustrating, as it takes forever to get what happens to Lizzie’s father and (step)mother. The idea here, is that Lizzie is forced to kill them in self-defense, because they were overtaken by something and turned into monsters. Of course she can’t tell that to a jury, so once freed, she buys a house on the other side of the town and sets about to protect herself and her sister.

Unfortunately, she’s not really able to protect them against the danger that’s coming from the water, and the characters spend a lot of time trying to figure out what’s going on while death and mayhem continue.

Told in a series of letters, journal entries, and other written media, Maplecroft is reasonably paced for the most part. There were several bits I thought could be taken out and nobody would miss them, although it’s possible that they were set-ups for the rest of the series.

I might have enjoyed the story more had I been able to sit and read it in one sitting, as I was continually being interrupted and therefore unable to immerse myself into the world. As it stood, though, the story bothered me because it felt like the characters were constantly chasing their tails, unable to solve the mystery and unwilling to work together (until the doctor finds out, and even then there’s very little of them working together).

Like I said, I can see how this book would appeal more to people who really enjoy the horror end of things, and the writing was easy enough to read. For me, however, this book came out as a low 3/5 and I have no interest in reading the sequel.

Book Review – The Witness

Title: The Witness

Author: Nora Roberts

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2012

A strong start is crucial to a good book. This one has it. I read the preview chapters in the back of another book I was reading and promptly added it to my library list. Unfortunately, after the sample preview chapters, I found it hard to get going in the book. Eventually I skipped ahead to the ‘now’ time of the story and started powering through it (and did go back and read the part I skipped), so I would say to read that section straight through in one sitting.

The Witness is the story of a girl who, in her first (and, really, last) act of teenage rebellion, witnesses a brutal murder and is forced to go into witness protection – only for her protectors to be killed in turn. She goes on the run, and twelve years later finds herself hiding away in a small town. A meeting with the Police Chief leads to a romance, and now she must decide if she will continue to hide, always prepared to run, or if she will face her past once and for all.

While Roberts’ writing was solid, as always, there was something about this book that was rather meh for me. Part of my issue, I think, was that the main character (Elizabeth/Abigail) always acts like she’s in danger, however we don’t get any true sense that she is once she goes into hiding (so for most of the book). There were several places where I thought that heat would be brought down on her – especially when the private detective starts to investigate her – but in general the only reason we know she’s in danger is because she acts like she is.

Although the story ostentatiously focuses on Abigail, we get far more of a focus on Brooks’ problems and issues. While interesting, they are less interesting than the story that drives Abigail, and therefore the story suffers. We also get a lot of ‘facetime’ with the residents of the town, but I feel like not enough is spent on Brooks’ family (whom I adored) and instead we get too much from Brooks’ antagonists.

Abigail, as a character, was almost too perfect for me. Once she goes into hiding, and especially the way we see her in the main part of the book, she really makes no big mistakes. She’s smart, so she can do all these amazing things with just time and effort, and while she doesn’t understand the social niceties in a normal way, she has learned enough academically that she doesn’t even misstep there either. Roberts has done other socially awkward heroines who have worked far better for me than Abigail did. Brooks is the typical, smooth, wonderful hero. Bland is probably the best way to describe him. His family was the best part of his side of the story.

One of the things that Roberts does do well is to give each character a very distinctive voice. Abigail speaks in very literal, high-definition terms while Brooks has a far more laid-back and country pattern to his speech.

I wouldn’t classify this as one of Roberts’ best books, but it held my attention once the main part started, and I might want to reread it as some point in the future. A solid 3/5 stars.