More Books than Time

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

A Crown for Cold Silver – Complicated, Confusing and Ultimately Unpleasant

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I started A Crown for Cold Silver during a month of intense busyness, reading 15 minutes one day, half an hour another.  The book started strong, with five different groups all engaged in life-or-death struggles in interesting and different situations.  I wanted to know more and see what connected these people, what would happen next, but it was hard when reading a dribble here and a drabble there.  Finally I had an evening with several hours and sat down to enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the strong beginning peters out.  We see how the characters will connect, what may eventually bring them together, who may oppose whom.  But none of the characters is likable or interesting enough to keep going.  About half way through my evening I found myself distracted, wanting to do just about anything aside from finishing the novel.

Too Much Back Story

The world in A Crown for Cold Silver has a complex geo-political back story, something that usually fascinates me and keeps me going.  A challenge with building a new fantasy world in a novel is moving the story along with action and character development at the same time as explaining the back story and helping the reader understand the context.  This is essential for a novel that has geo-political/religious/cultural conflicts and it is where author Alex Marshall fails to deliver.

A Crown for Cold Silver has plenty of action, lots and lots of action, and some character development.  I liked the characters less he more I learned about them, not a good sign.  None of the countries or religious groups were attractive either; the Crimson Empire apparently used assassination and regicide and duels to transfer power and the main religious group was sadistic.

Just Not Interesting

The combination of overly-complex and un-illuminated fantasy world with unlikable characters and what felt like a pointless plot (revenge no matter the cost) left me feeling “so what”.  In fact I could not quite finish the book even though it was from NetGalley.  (I’ve managed to get through some real stinkers but this one was just too bad to read.)

Maps might have helped but I think the main problems are the unlikable people and the fact the actions take place in a world that we know nothing about.

1 Star

I received this novel from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

The Bear and the Nightingale – Best to Read in Your Warmest Room

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Russian winters are long, long and cold and full of snow.  In the days of the Rus winter was terrifying; even rich nobles risked starvation and freezing.  Roads were closed in fall and spring, open in winter for sleds and in summer for horses.  Winter was a time for fear and staying close by the fire, with whole families sleeping on top the oven to survive.

Katherine Arden’s new novel, The Bear and the Nightingale, is set in the late 1200s, after the Mongols conquered the Kievan Rus kings who ruled semi-autonomously from their wooden palace in Kiev.  Vasilisa. the main character, is the daughter of a rich Boyer and the granddaughter of a prior Kievan king.

Vasilisa has a happy life with her close family and kind father until he remarries, this time to the fiercely devout and unpleasant daughter of the current king, his brother-in-law.  (Apparently the Rus nobility weren’t concerned with degrees of consanguinity because Vasilisa’s sister marries the king’s nephew, her first cousin.)  Her new stepmother wants Vasilisa gone, married if possible, cloistered if not, or dead if all else fails.  She gains an ally in the new village priest, an ambitious man.  Vasilisa is willing to marry but would prefer to remain single, to visit her sister in Kiev or to stay and care for her young half sister.  Unfortunately she doesn’t get a choice.

Primary Conflicts

The story moves along in small plot incidents, much like daily life does for everyone.  We have several conflicts, both open and simmering, that intertwine around Vasilisa and her affinity for the household and nature spirits that most people cannot see.

  1. Vasilisa to be married/cloistered or Vasilisa to be free
  2. Stepmother/priest vs. the household spirits
  3. Winter as a deadly force vs. everyone
  4. Winter as a nature spirit vs. his brother

The story is easy to follow as conflicts rise to the surface then subside.  There is not a lot of drama.  Vasilisa saves the small son of her father’s serfs at the cost of scaring off her betrothed a day or two before the wedding by out-thinking and out-riding him.  She flees her stepmother’s plans to force her to a convent and runs into Winter’s brother who takes the form of a rich, normal man. All these events just happen, although each has ramifications that follow.

Arden does an excellent job showing Winter as man’s deadly enemy.  The Rus live in a cold, inhospitable land and must force nature to allow them to live.  They plant and harvest – even the priest helps harvest – and they cut wood.  They put up thick shutters and keep the oven running day and night.  They eat what they can and when the ground freezes and it’s safe they hunt for meat during the short winter days.  We see the effort it takes to create and retain any sort of civilization in this wild land northeast of Kiev.

Writing Style

Arden writes in a natural, unaffected manner that is easy to read, enjoyable, but also understates the high moments that could have used a bit of drama.  It is as though we see the events through the eyes of a child who sees what happens but doesn’t recognize the import unless it directly affects him.

Overall the story is good.  I particularly liked her personification of Winter as a force and an enemy, and Arden did a nice job characterizing Vasilisa and her father as people.  We could understand their hard choices and the depth it took to retain one’s decency in the face of harsh climate and a miserable wife or stepmother.

Not Like Uprooted

The blurbs on Amazon and NetGalley compare The Bear and the Nightingale to Naomi Novik’s Uprooted but that is unfair to both novels.  Uprooted uses a character’s name from a Russian fairy tale but is set in a created fantasy world and the main character works magic.  The Bear and the Nightingale is based on a Russian fairy tale and is set in the real world, the Rus Kievan kingdom of the 1200s and magic is the background.  Both feature young women with unique gifts who must fight terrible enemies to save their homes and families, but otherwise they have little in common.

Overall

The Bear and the Nightingale is good, well worth reading, especially when you remember that it is Katherine Arden’s first novel.  Had I not been expecting more fantasy, more on the lines of Uprooted I would have liked it better, but it is still a fine novel showing family and home in the depths of Russian winter.  Older teens and adults will enjoy the flowing style and interesting characters and setting.

I received a free advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

4 Stars

All Our Wrong Todays – Jetsons World or Ours? Loneliness or Love?

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All Our Wrong Todays is an imaginative time travel story starring Tom Barren as a guilt-ridden doofus in a Jetsons world who never seems to quite get it right.  Tom’s world diverged from ours in 1965 when scientist Lionel Gottreider demonstrated a power source that used the Earth’s motion – clean, non-polluting, infinite.  The power source gave off radiation; in Tom’s original world Gottreider leaves it run and he and the 12 scientists observing the experiment die a few months later, but only after Gottreider gives the technology to the world.

Tom is miserable for lots of reasons and impulsively jumps into the time travel machine his father invented.  Unfortunately, true to his track record, he forgets to use the suit designed to keep time travelers invisible and unable to interact with the past and unable to change history.  When Tom goes back to the crucial moment he startles Gottreider and interrupts the experiment.  Gottreider survives and Tom returns to the present.

Our present.  No flying cars, no fantastic gadgets, good-bye peace and hello to the world we know, as mucked up as ever.  Tom is now John Barren, a visionary architect with loving parents and a sister.  Tom has much happier life as John but is torn by grief and guilt for destroying his original world and causing millions of people to never be born.  Of course it could be worse.  Gottreider’s experiment has a third possible outcome, a massive meltdown that destroys North America and causes Tom to be Victor, a vicious special ops agent.

Characters

What makes All Our Wrong Todays work is the character, Tom/John/Victor.  He stays himself, Tom mostly, as he tries to integrate Tom and John, learns to enjoy his family, falls in love.  We walk along with Tom as he develops a personality, possibly the first time he’s ever been himself and not just his father’s son or the famous architect.  He meets Penny and learns to love, meets his sister and learns what it is like to have a family that cares about him.  He gives a talk about his architectural vision and learns what it is like to be successful.

All through Tom never stops thinking of himself as at least part doofus, trying to figure out what to do to correct the world – and trying to decide whether that’s the right thing to do if it is even possible.  We can imagine ourselves in the same situation because Tom isn’t a miracle worker or a hero, he is just a guy and kind of a failure.

Tom learns to enjoy his new world, despite the guilt, decides flying cars are no match for a happy, fulfilling life.  Still he knows the world as a whole is less well-off, less peaceful and he wrestles with the question whether to risk everything to put the world back even if he loses himself.

A Lot of Fun

Some time travel stories are awful, with bad plots or cardboard characters or too much technical jabber.  Most lack a sense of fun.  All Our Wrong Todays feels right.  We can imagine being Tom, making the wrong choice, ending the world as he knows it, trying to discover what is true vs. imaginary, trying to correct the problem.

All Our Wrong Todays reminded me of The Door Into Summer, one of my favorite novels from Robert Heinlein.  It has a similar sense of an individual who is caught up in time gone wrong and who then must correct the outcome.  The Door Into Summer was about one person with little sense that his mix up affects the world, while All Our Wrong Todays has a more consequential change and Tom has a personal and global impact.

Debut Novel

All Our Wrong Todays is the first novel by Elan Mastai who is screenwriter.  I don’t see room here for a sequel, unless Mastai uses the same setting and it will be interesting to see where he goes next with writing.  Dutton will publish All Our Wrong Todays  in February 2017 and Paramount has already picked it up for film.

4+ Stars

I received All Our Wrong Today’s from Net Galley in expectation of a review.

Review: The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church

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Author Peter J. Leithart is passionate about ending the divisions within Christianity and wrote The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church to show how divisions hurt all of us, to give his vision of a possible end point for a united church, and to suggest steps to reach unity.  His passion is both positive and not so.

He does not see Protestants returning to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches and emphatically rejects Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation, the papacy, Immaculate Conception, Mary’s assumption, redemption, the use of any revelations or inspirations other than the Bible.  He envisions “Reformational Catholicity” as the end point of reunion, a high church with plenty of stained glass and hymns, with fixed (or semi-fixed) liturgy, with doctrine stripped of everything that we Catholics believe today that Protestants do not.

I am no expert of Protestant beliefs or worship services, thus am guessing based on simplified doctrine, but the Presbyterian confessions and doctrinal statements stated on their web page were similar to Leithart’s envisioned dogma.

The best points of Leithart’s book were his diagnoses of the evils brought forth by the endless splitting and re-splitting of churches into denominations.  He points out that:

  • Much like no-fault divorce, when it’s easy for disagreeing factions to simply separate than to honestly search for reconciliation and agreement, we will see continuing divisions and splits.
  • Multiple denominations, many with similar beliefs but different worship or leadership structures, foster church shopping, where would-be worshipers flit from church to church, looking for just the perfect place that doesn’t upset or challenge.
  • The agreement to play nice, get along, be respectful and agree tod isagree means never confronting error or sin between churches
  • We dilute the force of Christ’s message by being soft, too nice, water down the beliefs and soon forget to call sin, sin.  We become secularized.
  • Disunity is bad for us spiritually and bad for our country.  (He focuses on American Christianity.)
  • Disunity grieves God.

I was interested in his sections describing “Reformational Catholicism” and was glad that I was reading on a Kindle to look up some of his words and names.  The book prompted me to read and research some of the mainline churches and their backgrounds and doctrines.

Leithart is convinced that the Catholic church is in serious error on many fronts.  For example he does not believe that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine, the doctrine we Catholics call transubstantiation.  He rejects this as unnecessary and as non-scriptural.  Yet he is offended, angered and appalled that our Catholic church reserves the Eucharist to members, to those who share our belief that we are receiving Christ himself, not merely a spiritual facsimile.  He insisted that the answer to denominations was not to return to Rome or to collapse into any existing church but to synthesize a new church, which carried forth the truths from the Reformation into a universal (i.e., catholic) church.

Leithart gives only a few steps to reach unity.  Mostly he recommends forging local ecumenical groups, where the focus is on the common beliefs and actions in the town, less so on the overall denominational leadership.

Overall the book was challenging, with interesting ideas and for me, some new insights into Protestant thought.  However Leithart’s fervor was tiring.  He wrote as though preaching, loud supplications, as though to drown out disagreements by the sheer number of words and repetition.  I almost quit reading but felt I owed it to see why he believed so strongly and what he proposed doing to solve the problem.  While he didn’t have many solutions, the overall discussion was well worth reading.

3-4 Stars (3 for the lack of solutions and sheer volume, 4 for the ideas.)

I received this from NetGalley in expectation of a review.

Billion Dollar Painter – Thomas Kinkade the Person and the Business

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Perhaps you’ve seen ads for little trinkets by Thomas Kinkade, “the painter of light”, or maybe you’ve visited one of the Thomas Kinkade galleries selling reproductions of his paintings in soft light and a rich, home-like setting.  I was vaguely aware of him from inserts in the Sunday paper that showed little cute cottages but didn’t realize he actually was a painter nor the breadth of his business empire until reading Billion Dollar Painter by Kinkade’s associate Eric Kuskey.

Billion Dollar Painter has two main themes:  Thomas Kinkade the man and his business empire, and art as a business.

Thomas Kinkade and His Company

Kincaid died of alcohol poisoning, leaving behind a mess.  He had partnered with ambitious, unscrupulous people in a company to first, reproduce his paintings to reach more customers, second, to license his images for everything from mugs to odd plastic snowmen with cottages inside, and third, to sell his reproductions for large sums through dedicated galleries.

Kuskey described how Kinkade and his partners created an image of a Godly man that combined with his appealing scenes to reach over 20 million customers and eventually over $4 billion in sales.  Unfortunately the company’s push for volume at all costs eventually was its undoing.

Kuskey tried to portray Kinkade as a gentle person, a dedicated artist who truly believed he was called by God to spread joy through his art, but he gave enough hints about Kinkade and his associates (including himself) to show the man was so hungry for acclaim and money that he became a fraud.

Example:  The company portrayed the Kinkade galleries as a no-brainer investment to hundreds of middle-aged couples who were eager to be part of the Thomas Kinkade mystique.  Gallery owners had to set up showrooms with expensive fittings, buy a minimum amount of inventory every year and were forbidden to discount.   Hundreds of couples lost everything when the company over saturated the market.

Example:  Kinkade developed the technique to mass produce reproductions of his paintings onto art canvas, then have someone add a few highlights by hand and sign mechanically using a tiny bit of his blood  in the ink to prove provenance via DNA.  The company made enormous editions – shipping them by the truckload – yet marketed them as collectible, almost original, at very high prices.  While one could purchase a small paper print for $100, the hand-highlighted canvas giclees were over $10,000.

Example:  Kinkade loved to drink and gamble.  Kuskie describes several incidents where Kinkade got sloppy drunk and urinated out the hotel window or in the elevator.  He mentioned one evening where they played poker and drank and talked about football, baseball and girls.  (I wondered whether it was “locker room banter”.)   The man could never drink enough or own enough things.  He even bought a house out from underneath his supposed best friend, and purchased cars and boats and more houses.  Kuskie didn’t mention Kinkade helping anyone learn to paint (as he had been helped) or charitable giving, just desperate consumption.

Questions of Art and Business

I was unfamiliar with Kinkade’s work and looked at his paintings online.  The cottages and homes are lovely, pretty homes with a welcoming walk to a front door all set in verdant lawns or trees or snow-covered shrubs.  They look 3-dimensional and are appealing, I wanted to walk up that path and open that door.  At least that was the first house and the first cottage.  The second house and cottage were almost identical to the first.  Same building, different setting.  Third, ditto.  Fourth, fifth, so on, all were essentially the same.

All were warm and welcoming, some place that a frazzled young couple could imagine living, where the baby doesn’t have colic and the bills never pile up.  He painted an imaginary life filled with peace and happiness.

The paintings appealed to many people, especially folks that had not bought art before.  The pictures were safe, easy to display, pretty, impressively framed and non-controversial.  According to Kuskie, Kinkade wanted to “envelop his audience in a memory, a feeling, a world that held a sacred, safe place for them”.   Kuskie made the point that Kinkade’s work “questioned the modern art mandate that art has to be inaccessible, cerebral, or negative in order to be legitimate”.

There is some truth to Kuskie’s comment.  I have seen the same sort of slotting in art, where pieces that are frankly ugly, but make a political point or use impressive techniques or have symbolic meaning have won acclaim.  Some sophisticates seem to feel that good art is always challenging, that common people won’t understand or appreciate it, and that by definition, if common folks do like something then it cannot be any good.

I wouldn’t consider Kinkade’s endless series of cottages or houses as particularly great art, but not because middle class folks like them. I like the fact they convey peace and the viewer’s emotional response becomes part of the art.  But there isn’t anything after that initial welcome feeling.  We don’t see the inside, just the inviting exterior, and the lighthouses and gazebos look artificial, not at all appealing.  (Kinkade did plein air paintings that were quite good but they weren’t part of the company’s marketing engine.)

Kuskie contrasts the dynamic in fine art, where the balance between demand and supply needs careful attention to maintain its limited nature.  Artists create reproductions to reach a wider audience and increase over all sales and income and must be careful to keep edition sizes low as otherwise the art print has limited value.  By contrast, the licensing business thrives on volume, the more trinkets and calendars the better.

I am interested in business and art and found Kuskie’s insights about marketing and building a consistent product backed by on-message promotion and placement and with a price point just high enough to be a bit of a stretch but not too high that it was unaffordable.  Kuskie was more comfortable talking about business than talking about his friend Thomas.

Writing

Kuskie has interesting stories and ideas and I enjoyed reading Billion Dollar Painter, but he is not a good writer.  There is repetition and filler and he jumps around in time too much.  A good editor would have cut it by a third.

Kuskie describes Kinkade as fun-loving and a great friend to be with, but the man he shows with his examples is someone I would never want to be around.  Many other company leaders also come across as obnoxious, greedy and not all that good at running a profitable company or behaving fairly with customers.  Kuskie sees himself as a good guy, only peripherally involved with the company, not responsible for its results.  He sees himself as Thomas Kinkade’s good friend, yet he seems to have enabled the drinking binges, always willing to go out with Kinkade to a dive.  It didn’t ring true.

The selection of colored plates is weak.  Kuskie has many photos of Kinkade with his business associates, but no pictures of his paintings and only one picture of a licensed trinket.   Kuskie contrasts Kinkade with other successful artists, none of whom I was familiar with, and a plate or two of each one’s work would have been interesting.  I ended up finding them online.

Overall

Read Billion Dollar Painter if you are interested in art or business, or want to see how someone managed to pull tragedy out of success.  Don’t expect great writing or deep insights about the man Thomas Kinkade.  It’s a fast read and worth the time.

4 Stars

The Best of All Possible Worlds – Wife Hunting on Cygnus Beta

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In Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds humanity is descended from four primary planetary group and their cross-breeds.  Long-lived Sadari masters of mental discipline, subsume their emotions into strong telepathic bonds; the Ntshune are emotional, masters of the heart, strong empaths; Zhinu are strong with things, technology and trade while Terrans are “unmatched in spirit”, strong in mind, heart and body.  Terra (Earth) is quarantined but the rest of humanity can see everything we do and has access to our current arts and literature; Shakespeare and Casablanca are well known.

People on Cynus Beta are a mix of all four with many having been rescued from dire situations by the Caretakers.  Our heroine Delerau is half Terran and Ntshune while her counterpart Dllenahkh is full Sadiri.

The Best of All Possible Worlds opens with Sadira, the home planet destroyed and the only Sadiri survivors are mostly men, those who were off planet at the time.  Author Karen Ord notes that the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami left mostly male survivors which is the inspiration for her novel.  The central question for Dllenahkh is:  What shall the Sadiri do to survive as a culture and race?  Shall they double down and maintain strict racial purity?  Or seek out taSadiri, those Sadiri who do not practice the mental disciplines?  Or cross-breed with other humans but raise the children as Sadiri?

To that end Dllenahkh and Delerau are part of a science team visiting the many taSadiri settlements on Cygnus Beta to evaluate potential wives.  This sounds horribly clinical, eugenic, although Lord makes it clear that human interests and likes are a very large concern.

You might not think that a wife hunt makes a good plot for a science fiction novel, and if you are looking for action or exotic locales then The Best of All Possible Worlds is not for you.  Lord uses the agglomeration of societies on Cygnus Beta to provide plot movement although the biggest events happen inside Delerau’s heart and mind.

Characters

Dllenahkh is complex.  It is unfair to say he’s unemotional and he’s no Mr. Spock with logic overriding all emotions.  Instead the Sadiri are extremely emotional and the only methods to keep from running amok are to become a mind ship pilot, form a close emotional telepathic bond to a spouse, or serious mental discipline and meditation.  That need for a close telepathic bond is the driver for the wife hunt; finding compatible wives is truly a matter of life or death.

We see him as a complicated person but I don’t think we really get to know Dllenahkh.

Delerau is easier to know.  She narrates the story and we see events and people through her eyes, struggle with her through the emotional tangles with Dllenahkh and her family.  She faces a difficult problem when the science team visits the isolated enclave Kir’tahsg and discovers almost slavery and coerced sexual relations.  She decides to run genetic analyses on individuals, when such analyses violate the General and Science Codes.  Even though this this has to be a difficult ethical choice for her, it seems distant, remote and I don’t feel we are privy to her decision or its difficulty.

Plot and Setting

The wife search gives Lord a chance to show off around ten different cultures, all on the same planet and all descended from Sadiri.  They range from the Faery Queen (yes, the Terran version) to an abandoned underground city to a secretive, monastic, isolated group of adepts.  The culture descriptions and the little touches to show the people and their settings were by far the best part of the novel.

Overall

I enjoyed The Best of All Possible Worlds.  It was different from anything I’ve read before, even from other science fiction/romance novels.  The writing is good and the characters are interesting with a plausible plot and actions.

The Caretakers are so intriguing that it’s a shame we see very little of them.  We don’t know who they are or why they act to rescue people.  One of them may make an appearance near the end of the novel.

If you like your science fiction full of dire threats and extravegent action then skip The Best of All Possible Worlds.  If you like reading about people in impossible but subtle situations then try it.

4 Stars

The Wretched of Muirwood – Just OK Fantasy by Jeff Wheeler

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The Wretched of Muirwood has almost 1900 Amazon reviews with a 4.5 star average and it’s the first novel in a fantasy series that also has high scores.  I didn’t care much for the story.  Setting and back story are so-so, characters are so-so, setting and magic system are a quasi-religion where faith will let you do stuff and fear or jealousy will keep you impotent.  Real faith is not utilitarian.

Wretched of Muirwood follows the traditional unknown/poor/underdog person discovers he has magic and an important fate.  In this case the underdog is Lia, an orphan left at the Muirwood abbey where she lives and serves in the kitchen.  Lia tells us from the first chapter that she wants to read, to be a learner more than anything, but it’s forbidden.  After 287 pages we don’t know much more about her, although we trudged through a nasty swamp, rescued a young Earl, fought off the evil sheriff and suffered homesickness.

The novel wasn’t catalogued in our system as YA but it’s obviously meant for younger readers.  It’s short with plenty of white space and big print to fill 287 pages and the characters are youths.  None of the emotional conflicts feel real.

Let’s say 3 stars, not horrible but not recommended.

 

Ancient Egyptian Jewelry by Carol Andrews – Fascinating Text and Photos

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If you browse art museums’ gift catalogs this Christmas you’ll notice many necklaces and bracelets that are inspired by Egyptian jewelry.  The style is distinctive with eads in blue, green and red, golden drops and spacers, simple color combinations.  Dave has given me three Egyptian-styled necklaces from the art museums, which I love wearing but knew nothing about the meaning of the stones or colors.

Carol Andrews, author of Ancient Egyptian Jewelry, shows and describes many pieces from over 4000 years of Egyptian culture and includes details about the tomb where found or the original owner.  She uses a numerical index on photos that correspond to small numbers in the margin by the description, a big benefit because the photos are often separated by many pages from the description.

I got the book expecting to be dazzled by photos but in fact the text was more interesting.  My favorite chapters covered the materials and techniques.  Ms. Andrew does a wonderful job describing what materials the Egyptians used, how they varied over time and where the artisans sourced the stones.  She vividly brings the jewelry workshops to life by showing tomb paintings, some that include workers’ conversations, and explaining what the pictures meant.

A few things that fascinated me were:

  • All Egyptians wore jewelry all the time.  Lower class people wore less costly strung beads while richer folks indulged in gold and highly crafted inlaid or multi-string pieces.
  • Jewelry was adornment yes, but also highly symbolic.
  • Jewelry styles did not change all that much over 4000 years.  The Egyptians favored the same colors and the same motifs – falcons, scarab beetles, cobras, favorite divinities – all through the dynastic era.
  • Techniques and materials changed and some elements waned and waxed in popularity.  For example, amethyst was popular in the Middle Kingdom but wasn’t used much at all after that.  She noted the purple color wouldn’t have gone well in the inlay styles favored in the New Kingdom.
  • Egyptians used a lot of common-as-dirt materials!  They viewed lapis lazuli as the primo gem, green turquoise and carnelian as also precious.  But they were happy to use limestone or jasper, or even colored cement underneath quartz.
  • They used gold and silver and the alloy electrum and viewed gold as the divine metal.
  • Much of the jewelry buried with mummies was made on purpose for the tomb.  They were often more skimpy, not really wearable, and used inferior materials.  For instance in order to wear one of the big, heavy pectorals, the piece had to have a counterweight that lay on one’s back.  Funerary jewelry lacked the counterweights.
  • Egyptians wore white linen and used the jewelry for color.

Overall I recommend Ancient Egyptian Jewelry if you are interested in ancient history, jewelry in general, or want a lively and engaging look at 4000 years of high culture.

5 Stars

 

Blood and Honour – Fun Read by Simon R. Green

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Before the Nightside and Eddie Drood series Simon R. Green wrote several novels in quasi-medieval settings full of threatening dark forces and political enemies, loosely gathered into the Forest Kingdom series.  (Blue Moon Rising and the Hawk and Fisher stories are in this series.)  Blood and Honour is set in the same world, in the Kingdom of Redhart.

Our hero, Jordan, is an actor sadly fallen on hard times, now a travelling player working small town streets for a few ducats.  Three men offer him 10,000 ducats to impersonate Prince Victor of Redhart as he contends with his brothers for the throne.  Jordan is no fool and rejects the offer until he learns that Victor is aware of and approves; of course he gets a higher fee too.

Once in Castle Midnight (don’t you love the name?) Jordan finds the role is even harder than expected.  And yes, he is playing the villain.

Winning Characters

Jordan is a man in a hard place.  He figures out fast that Victor will kill him the minute he can and he knows for sure that Victor’s brothers will be happy to see him dead.  Not only that, but with the king dead, the Unreal is oozing into the castle, deadly to everyone whether actor, servant or king.

Jordan has a pretty good idea what a king ought to be, caring of his people, fair, honest, noble.  Neither Victor nor his brothers is anything like this ideal and Jordan doesn’t particularly want any of them to succeed their father.  Jordan has a few very tough choices to make and unerringly chooses the path to bring peace and restore goodness.

I enjoyed Jordan immensely.  He turned a horrible situation into something that may turn out just right, yet he never whined (or at least not much) and he faced the problem without blaming everyone else.  He took action when action needed to be taken.  And he never lost his sense of perspective or duty or honor, even when those around him failed to remember theirs.

Green does an excellent job showing us the characters, not telling us.  We see how weak and despicable Victor is when he blithely orders all 25 kitchen workers hung because he was poisoned, not caring that many were children, not even caring that he just killed off the people who make the meals and everyone likes to eat.  We see how evil Dominic and oldest brother Lewis are by their attacks and use of undead and Unreal.

Plot, Setting and Writing Style

Blood and Honour moves fast and we feel like Jordan must, with everything turning to ruin, no good way out.  The Unreal are fascinating as are the ghosts and factions in Castle Midnight.  I stayed up late to finish this!

I’ve had mixed feelings about Simon R Green’s writing before.  He does an excellent job with story and people complicated with creepy settings.  Many of his later books are downers, where you end the novel feeling like you need to take a bath and go look at rainbows and springtime flowers just to get up the next morning.  Blood and Honour isn’t like that.  Yes, there are evil, undead nasties, greed, dark sorcery, castles with bloody fangs in the walls, sharks and treachery.  But Jordan brings clarity as to what should be done, how things ought to work, and his clear thinking keeps us readers optimistic even when everything is going to ruin and damnation.

(See my review of Tales of the Hidden World for more about Simon R. Green’s darker stories.)

I didn’t realize until checking Amazon to write this review that Blood and Honour is book 2 in the Forest Kingdom series.  Reading Blood and Honour prompts me to get my copy of Blue Moon Rising out and re-read it, then get the other books in the series!

5 Stars

 

Dragons, Mummies, Remnants from Merrie England – Chasing Embers by James Bennet

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If anyone asks you the riddle, “What do Merrie Olde England, Celtic stories, the Queen of Punt, evil mummified priests, Queen Hatshepsut and drought in Ethiopia have in common?” you now know the answer.  Chasing Embers by James Bennet combines all of these into an interesting story.  Hero Ben Garston is a Remnant, the single member of his magical race allowed to live awake in our world by virtue of the ancient Lore, the agreement brokered by King John of England between men and magical beings in 1215.

Ben is a dragon, and if another dragon awakens then the Lore will break and humans and the magicals will once more be at war.  So how do Hatshepsut, mummies and Punt get in the middle of this?  Simple. Hatshepsut’s evil undead priest Baba Kamenwati wants to entice Anubis to the world and uses Ben’s girlfriend Rose as bait.  A young girl hoping for a miracle to end the hideous drought that is killing everyone wakes up Atiya, Queen of Punt, a demigoddess of sorts, who can take on dragon form.   Clear yes?

Chasing Embers is easier to follow than it sounds but it took me several pages to get into the story.

Characters

Chasing Embers is not a character-centric novel, in fact Bennet builds only enough character to prop up the story. Characterization is weak and people seem to do things just to do them.

Despite spending nearly the entire novel with Ben we don’t know him well.  He is idealistic, cynical, acts to protect his girlfriend Rose, curious, resourceful but felt like a character and not a person.  Ben is a dragon who can shapeshift to human, and as a human youth he fell in love and agreed to stop hunting people to please his beloved.  He has loved other human women and loves and wants to protect Rose, but she senses there is something off about Ben and rejects him.

Ben isn’t a happy person and he’s lonely and feels sorry for himself.  He isn’t happy with his life and does nothing to change it.

The most interesting character is Blaise Van Hart, the Fae envoy, a remnant himself in a way, left behind when the other Fae withdrew after King Arthur died at Camlann.  He plays a major role that gives the story a backbone.  We don’t know him well either, which makes sense since he cultivates mystery.

Villains read like comic book characters, seeming to enjoy villainy for evil’s sake.  Undead priest Baba Kamenwati wants Anubis God of Death to rule the world, not a wise desire.  The Coven Royal is three nasty witches, happy to hurt anyone but it’s not clear what they want to obtain beyond making trouble.  Minor villain Fulk Fitzwarren wants to reclaim the title, house and lands that his ancestor lost back in 1215.  I don’t think he would be all that happy owning a ruined castle but his family has schemed and fought Ben Garsten for the last 800 years to reclaim it, so why not.

Setting

The best parts of the book are in Egypt and Punt/Ethiopia.  Bennet helps us feel the hopeless drought, the hot dry air, the sand that gets into everything, the spectacle of Hatshepsut’s entourage, the sun baking Punt and the people who eack out their living in ancient Egyptian tombs today.

Writing Style

Bennet manages to juggle all the pieces and keep his complex plot up in the air.  While he isn’t a gifted storyteller he writes clearly enough that this complicated story with jogs back in time to 1215 AD and 1470 BC makes sense and we can keep the various characters clear.  Chasing Embers is Bennet’s first published novel and writing is fairly decent considering that.

The first part of the story is boring and doesn’t make a lot of sense as we hop from modern New York to modern Ethiopia.  When Chasing Embers finally got interesting and I was compelled to keep reading, my tablet said I was 18% through the novel.  If you are like me, 18% is a long way to go before a story coalesces and starts to move forward.

Overall

Chasing Embers is fantasy with an unusual, interesting premise (the Lore and Remnants), a vivid glimpse of ancient Punt and the meeting of two queens.  Ben is a dragon but this is not just another dragon story as it combines history and myths from multiple eras and peoples.  The weak characters are offset by the setting and Bennet’s imaginative use of Egypt ancient and modern, Ethiopia and Punt.

I enjoyed reading Chasing Embers – once past the magic 18% point it was no hardship to finish unlike many fantasies – but didn’t like the novel enough to look for the sequel, if one is written.  Overall 3+ stars.

NetGalley gave me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.