More Books than Time

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

Suspense and Romance, Deceived by Irene Hannon

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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.

Excellent! Faith, Love, Sacrifice With A Football Background – A Life Intercepted

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The blurb on A Life Intercepted: A Novel caught my eye, “Matthew “The Rocket” Rising had it all.  Falsely accused of a heinous crime with irrefutable evidence…all was lost.”  Matthew Rising won the Heisman trophy for best college football player twice, led his team to the national championship three times and was the number 1 draft pick in the NFL.  In Matthew’s mind all these were nothing compared to his marriage to Audrey.

Matthew was convicted of sexual assault and deviant sex with a minor based on a video of sex acts that did not show his face plus testimony of the three women who woke up with him in their bed.  He never made it to training camp, never made any money, and worst, his wife disappeared.

Paroled after 12 years he is forbidden to approach a minor, to work or live within half a mile of a daycare or school, completely broke, homeless and with no job prospects.  Matthew went back to his hometown to find his wife.  His oldest friend lets him stay in his cabin, which is just far enough from the Catholic convent and high school.   He has no intention to violate his parole, just to find Audrey and peace.

 

Matthew finds Audrey is living at the convent, where she planted a flower garden that memorializes Matthew’s final play in his last college football game.   Dee Dalton, 17 years old and a wanna be football quarterback, approaches Matthew to ask for his help.  Dee had been a fine young player but his throwing mechanics are messed up and he needs to learn from someone besides his high school coach.   Matthew initially says no, since that would violate his parole and land him back in prison, this time for life.

 

Audrey comes to Matthew and tells him that he owes it to her to coach Dee, that he cheated her of a family and a life and further that no one would ever know.  Matthew knows that it is all too likely that his nemesis, the person who framed him for the sexual assault, will in fact be watching him, looking for evidence he broke parole.  Nonetheless Matthew agrees to coach Dee as a sacrifice to show Audrey what she means to him.

 

Of course his nemesis videotapes the coaching sessions.  Each individual parole violation means 10 years in prison and Matthew and Dee meet over 70 times.  Matthew is arrested but only after demonstrating to the football loving world that both he and Dee are ready to play, Matthew at the NFL and Dee at high school, then college.

Tight Plot with a Unique Setting

We know all through the book that Matthew is innocent although we don’t know the details nor how – or whether – he will somehow win through.  Author Charles Martin keeps us in suspense until near the end.  He unfolds the plot through Matthew’s memories offset with the events as they occur.  We see Matthew willingly sacrifice his life to help Dee, initially for Audrey’s sake then for Dee’s, and through the memories of Matthew’s life with Audrey.

The novel is set behind the scenes of football, not the games themselves but the practices and the events after the games.  You do not have to understand or like football to enjoy the book because the game is the setting, not the purpose.

There were a few weak points, mostly in the trial that found Matthew guilty.  I thought of a couple points his lawyer could have made, such as whether the DNA evidence against Matthew included semen, whether his fingerprints were on the video camera, the fact it was dark, all of which could have cast some doubt in the jurors’ minds.  But the story is not about the trial.

Charles Martin’s  purpose isn’t to debate the merits of the case, but to show that it happened, that the evidence was overwhelming, that even Matthew’s lawyer and his wife believed him guilty.  This is the set up for the real meat of the novel, how Martin deals with gross injustice.

The resolution with Ginger, Matthew’s supposed victim was wonderful, but it required the woman to completely forego everything she had for something she had never wanted.  It was great to read but a bit far fetched.  Let’s hope that people are like that.

Characters

Matthew and Dee are well done.  Matthew remains loving and determined.  He knows exactly the value of the worldly success and the happy marriage he thought he had, and he has a fine perspective on which matters.

Wood and Ray, Matthew’s two friends, steal the show.  They are courageous, caring, willing to help Matthew, willing to more-or-less believe him.  The character I found the weakest was Audrey.  I understand she was incredibly hurt, wounded to near death by her husband’s betrayal, but it was incredible to me that she insisted he coach Dee even knowing it meant life imprisonment if caught.  She clearly did not expect the vindictive Ginger to spy on Matthew and videotape his movements, and why should she.  She believed Matthew guilty.

A Life Intercepted is a coming of age novel that brings four characters to adulthood, Matthew and Dee of course, and Audrey and Ginger too.  Matthew’s coming of age isn’t when he’s in his teens or college, but as he works with Dee and earlier, in some of his prison memories where he loses the hate and grows his way to redemption.

Thoughts on Redemption

A Life Intercepted: A Novel is one of the finest books I’ve read in a long time.  I read this concurrently with Memory by Lois Bujold, which gave a unique flavor to the experience. Both novels are about redemption and both have exotic settings, football with A Life Intercepted and the planet Barrayar in Memory.

The primary difference is in the nature of redemption.  Memory is all about Miles’ self-redemption after an act he did commit.  A Life Intercepted is about the redemption Matthew offers to his wife, his supposed victim, his fans, the young Mac for acts they committed, not what he had done.  Reading the two books together helped me see the difference and realized that A Life Intercepted first shows Matthew accepting the injustice, coming to peace internally, then offering that peace to the others who judged and rejected him.  It is a Christ-like redemption, not a private personal redemption.

The underlying themes of love, faith, redemption and sacrifice are timeless.  Combine those with excellent characters you care about, intense plot and good writing and you have a real winner.  Five stars.

Short Stories From a Favorite Children’s Author – Disconcerting Tales for Adults

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One of my favorite authors as a kid was Elizabeth Enright.  I read her books about the Melendy family, The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, Then There Five and Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze, over and over. I identified with Randy and felt Rush was just like my brother Bob. Thimble Summer and Newberry winner Gone-Away Lake  were favorites too, although I read each of them only a half dozen times or so.

I recently ordered the Melendy books for our granddaughter to read when she visits and came across a book of collected short stories she wrote for adults, Borrowed Summer.  Had I not seen the author’s name I would not have guessed these were by the same author as the serious but oh-so-much-fun children’s books.  All the stories are set in the late 1930s to mid 1940s.

The title story sets the tone.  Raymond Lantry is a clerk, living at a mean boardinghouse in the city who has no money, no family and no prospect of ever having anything more than a dreary life all alone.  He has one radiant memory, of a week in the country so long ago, visiting his aunt.

One day Raymond decides to abscond with one of the firm’s payments instead of depositing it as he should.  He goes west, leaves the train on a whim somewhere in rural Wisconsin.  Raymond tells everyone he is Raymond Beemond, looking for a quiet place to write a book, and takes a room with Mrs. Meinhardt at her farm.  Raymond spends the golden summer building memories.  Helping with the harvest, spending time fishing with little Marvel, eating with the family.  There is growing interest with widowed Mrs. Meinhardt.

It ends when Mrs. Meinhardt’s son, Earl, is wounded in the Pacific war and is coming home.  Raymond says good-bye, leaves all the rest of his embezzled money in an oriole’s nest in Earl’s room and goes back east to face the music.  The story makes you question what you would do if you had no memories, no summers of joy to recall and no hope.  It’s excellent.

Another very good one is Home to Grandma’s, where we see Fenella traveling south on the train with her mother to visit her grandmother.  Fenella is precocious, smart, polite, and six years old.  She is also African-American and bewildered by the strange way people treat her mother and her, especially when they reach their destination.  As her mother says “I forgot where I was.”  All Fenella wants to do is go home where things are normal again.

Most of the characters in the other stories are not good people.  Olivia in The Maple Tree is desperate to live in a ghostly fantasy.  In The Bureau of Lost and Found Mrs. Persin tries to confess her terrible cruelty and trouble-making to her dying brother-in-law.  She tells him how she made it look like her sister had an affair (which in the end caused her sister to commit suicide), but her brother-in-law is too busy dying to even listen.  Another character tells fortunes for a living and decides to frighten everyone, for no better reason than she fears her lover is casting her aside.

One of the recurring themes is the daughter (or daughter-in-law) caring for an invalid mother.  The one of these I liked best was A Ton of Pitchblende where the daughter-in-law takes comfort in a night flower which is ready to bloom its once-a-year blossom.

If you read this book you will remember the stories.  Not all of them of course, some did not resonate with me.  But the tales of women deciding to take revenge for some slight or hurt by grossly hurting everyone they can, or caring for an elderly mother or getting the news of a son’s death in war all have strong emotions.  The characters all try to solve the problem of alone-ness, alienation, whether by taking revenge or finding joy and storing memories.

I got this on inter library loan from Wayne State University.  Amazon has a different book of Elizabeth Enright’s short stories, The Riddle of the Fly & Other Stories, which I did not read.

 

 

Wild Horses – Dick Francis – Movie Making, Racing and Danger!

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If you like Dick Francis you’ll love his Wild Horses, a novel featuring film director Thomas Lyon who is making a movie loosely based on a true life unsolved hanging death that scandalized the English racing world 25 years before. If you haven’t found Dick Francis then this is a great introduction to his novels.

All of Francis’s novels are linked somehow to the English horse racing world, whether the main character is a jockey or trainer, or a chef with a fine restaurant in the racing countryside or a financier who backed the syndication of a prime stallion for stud. Wild Horses is one of two where the characters are making a movie.  (The other is Smokescreen set in South Africa.)

Synopsis

The novel starts with Thomas Lyon visiting an old family friend, Valentine, who is nearly dead of cancer.  Delirious with pain, Valentine mistakes Thomas for a priest and confesses to killing “the Cornish boy”.  Valentine is rambling and Thomas has no idea what he is talking about.  Thomas befriends Valentine’s widowed sister, Dorothea, and helps her with her overbearing and pompous son, Paul.  He also inherits all of Valentine’s books and papers.

Thomas’s movie, Unstable Times, is made from a successful novel that is rather dreamy and amorphous.  Thomas forces the stuck up author to revise the story to make it more intense, adds in steamy scenes and paints Cibber as the villain who killed the girl and is trying his best to frame the husband for murder. Thomas’s movie is completely untrue to the novel or the historical situation.  The author has a fit and so does the family of the real-life “Cibber”.

Thomas nearly loses his job as director, which would have finished his career, but by using the smarts that all of Francis’s heroes share, manages to keep his job.   Someone attacks Dorothea and nearly knifes her, attacks the star of the movie, and finally attacks Thomas himself.  Thomas figures out that the real life hanging so long ago and the fact he inherited the papers somehow are behind all the attacks.

Characters

Francis always does a great job with the primary male characters in his novels.  They are smart, resourceful, not too constrained by rules, and driven to succeed.  Our hero here, Thomas Lyon, fits the mold.  He is climbing the Hollywood ladder with Unstable Times, and is working with a top sletar, top cinematographer, producer and several excellent supporting people.  He brings his own vision of the story and adds elements that raise it from Hollywood schlock to a memorable film.  For example, he wants the woman who ends up hung to have a dream sequence with wild horses on the beach.  He manages to import horses from Norway and films a spectacular sequence with the stunt man standing on the wild horses as they stream out of the sunrise.

The side characters are also excellent, especially leading male actor Nash Rourke and doctor Robbie Gill.  Dorothea Pannier also is well drawn.  Even minor characters feel real.

Setting

Dick Francis always did thorough research and created realistic settings and back stories.  No doubt he talked to several real life directors and producers to get the movie backdrop just right. It’s one of the traits that make his books so memorable.  All his characters are a bit alike but we can separate them by the deep background and easily match each to the right book.

Writing

Overall Francis’s style is easy to follow, crisp with strong dialogue.  What always impresses me from a technical perspective is how he slides in the back story / setting and does it so well that you end up feeling like an expert on the subject without ever being lectured.

I wish science fiction and fantasy authors would develop back story /setting skills like Dick Francis.  (Don’t you get tired of all the techno mumble jumble about hyper this and gravity that?  I do and it’s also a glaring weakness in almost all the books with a military setting.)

I’m a big Dick Francis fan and can only praise Wild Horses. Read it. It’s good.

Classic Fantasy in Alternate History – The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

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I read The High Crusade about 50 years ago and again recently. Nothing changed. I still love it!

It’s a testimony to the enduring fun and seriously interesting The High Crusade is that it is still available on Amazon, and is one of the better selling science fiction/fantasy novels.

Synopsis

The basic story is fun:  Alien Wersgorix come to earth in 1345 intending to set up a base to exploit the planet and run into Englishmen led by Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville.  Sir Roger is on his way to the French wars under Edward III, so more than ready to fight.  Luckily he has his wife and family and the families of many others with him.  The Wersgorix never knew what hit them.

Of course Sir Roger then leads his merry band of knights and fighting men to take over the rest of the Wersgorix, starting by liberating unhappy vassal planets and making allies with the other servant races.

Sir Roger’s once loyal knight, Sir Owain, sees a great chance to take the Wergorix advanced weapons back to conquer the Earth (or at least Europe) himself.  During the fracas Sir Roger’s wife Catherine shoots Owain and the records he holds of how to go back home.  Sir Roger and Catherine win through but at the cost of not knowing how to get back to Earth.

The very last chapter jumps forward 800 years or so.  The English spread over many systems, establishing Christianity and modernized feudalism and English customs and ceremonies and attracting other peoples -even Wersgor – to their banners.  Finally Earth expedition travels far enough to find the thriving, English-speaking empire.

Similar Stories

I don’t know whether The High Crusade inspired other writers but other novels used similar plot devices.  In The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber, aliens kidnap a band of English knights and their families to use as slave soldiers to subdue restive natives and fight off competing companies.  The English manage to escape and build a powerful empire that later saves Earth.  (Weber’s novel grew out of a novella he wrote for the Ranks of Bronze series.)

Characters and Back Story

Poul Anderson wrote fun, fast-reading novels that all had interesting premises and characters lurking behind the sparkling plots. Sir Roger and his side kick Brother Parvus are shrewd and smart, first defeating the Wersgorix then the traitorous Sir Owain all while retaining their honor and Christian principles.  Wersgor Branithar is a worthy villain, plotting to give the English their comeuppance

The people are set up so well that the story is believable.

The back story is sketched in as a basic fact and we don’t have our noses rubbed in any political diatribes.  However the premises are that the Wersgorix are weakened by their extreme dispersal and lack of any unifying factors.  The other vassal people are perfectly happy getting the Wersgorix off their backs and (at first) don’t care what the English do.  The final chapter alludes to some of the other ex-vassals realizing too late that Sir Roger outwitted them.  They weren’t required to become vassals of the English, but they found their power and influence and ability to thrive and grow severely curtailed by Sir Roger’s vibrant civilization.

All in all I recommend The High Crusade to adults and teens. It’s a fun book that you’ll likely want to read again.

You’ve Heard of Virginia Woolf, How About Her Sister?

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Vanessa and Her Sister: A Novel by Priya Parmar follows the early days of the London Bloomsbury Group through the eyes of Virginia Stephen Bell, a painter and the sister of Virginia Woolf. The book does an excellent job fictionalizing the lives of well-known literary figures of the early 1900s.  Vanessa Stephen’s family was intellectual and produced successful upper class writers including Vanessa’s father and sister.

Priya Parmar used a fictional diary interspersed with notes, telegrams and tickets to tell the story of Vanessa Stephen Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf and their friends in the intellectual Bloomsbury circle.  The daily notes are full of dialogue and action plus Vanessa’s observations about her friends and her thoughts about how and whether she fits in.  This method was a perfect fit for people who lived in the now and in in the world of ideas and words.

The novel begins shortly after Vanessa’s father dies and she, her sister Virginia and brothers Thorpy and Adrian move to a house in an unfashionable part of London, Bloomsbury.

Vanessa’s younger brother, Thopy, started Thursday evenings At Home (informal gatherings on a set day), that brought a wide range of younger people, all active on the literary or art scene.  Eventually the circle expanded to those who married or in love with one of the friends, regardless whether they themselves wrote or painted.

We see the group evolve, split into smaller sub groups yet always remaining part of a larger set of friends, through Vanessa. She was raised to view her own gifts, art and painting, as lesser than the literary gifts of her sister.  She commented that she was less valuable than Virginia as after all, Virginia was a rare intellect.  Yet the  circle of friends connected through Vanessa after Thoby died, not with Virginia.  Today Vanessa is recognized as a fine artist in her own right and her paintings hang in museums.

I enjoyed the characters and the contrast of seeing the self-consciously avant-garde Bloomsbury group through Vanessa, portrayed in the novel as someone who loved family life and stability as much as she loved being part of something new.  Virginia Stephen Woolf, Vanessa’s sister, was the second main character.  Vanessa is shown as a loving sister who nonetheless was no fool and recognized Virginia as demanding, self-centered, difficult and greedy.

Vanessa and Her Sister shows Virginia so jealous and in love with her sister that she wanted everything Vanessa had.  She wanted her friends, she wanted her husband.  Yet Virginia did not want Vanessa’s life.  Not for her to be the quiet hub; she sought attention and to be first and primary.  The fictionalized Virginia is altogether unattractive.

Other characters are Clive Bell, Vanessa’s husband, Lytton Strachey, Thoby’s and Vanessa’s dear friend, and their extended circle.  Clive was a womanizer.  When Vanessa confronted him about his first affair Clive was surprised; didn’t she know he wanted a modern marriage?  Vanessa found nothing modern about infidelity.  In real life the couple stayed married but both had extended affairs and lived with other people as well as together.  According to the author’s note, Vanessa never forgave Virginia for her liaison with Clive; in the novel she couldn’t forgive either Virginia or Clive.

The setting was late Edwardian London up to about 1911.  Priya Parmar wrote about serious people.  The Bloomsbury group sought the new, the different, the experimental; not for them conventions in manners or in art or in literature.

Vanessa shocked her much older brother George Duckworth by attending Thoby’s At Home as the only female and unmarried at that.  Roger Fry, with whom Vanessa later had a 3 year affair, organized the first Post-Impressionist art showing in London, a show that Vanessa felt would change everything.  E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf were novelists; Lytton Strachey a noted biographer.   These were interesting people.

Priya Parmar wrote an interesting novel about interesting people.  Her diary technique was excellent, very well done.  The evolution of Vanessa from a hesitant girl, unsure of her own worth, to a confident woman who could put her sister aside and relish the Post-Impressionist work and her own success.  The dialogue and actions felt real and provided enough realist tension to make a readable, enjoyable novel.

Guess Graphic Novels Aren’t For Me

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

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

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

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

Good News, Criminals are Not Fun Guys – The Fifth Man

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On the good side, The Fifth Man by James Lapore did not try to glamorize or whitewash criminals. The main characters are the leader of a crime family and his son, with other side characters like the Russians, Chechen spies, Greeks, American friends and family. None of them comes across as anyone you would want to spend time with or trust for a moment to do anything that does not benefit their long term goals.

On the bad side, it was not clear what those long term goals were for any of the characters. We get a hint that Chris Massi, the family leader, had government connections and backing, and his side kick Max Green could connect with unnamed intelligence sources. Chris’ children, Matt and Tess, were both smart and physically appealing, highly educated, aware but not involved in their father’s “business”.

The Fifth Man is short enough that I read it in an evening. That was a good thing.

Matt and Chris were aware that murder is wrong, aware that they were making pivotal choices, but that was it. There was no ambivalence about immorality, no care for their souls nor the harm they did to themselves and others.

I thought several times about putting it down since the characters were so unappealing, but I was curious exactly who was doing what and why. Unfortunately we don’t learn the real motivations or even the full plot(s). Some characters ended up dead whom I thought were helpers and the back story didn’t make a ton of sense.

Supposedly Chris saw the face of a Russian intelligence leader, the Wolf, and thus the Wolf wanted him dead. OK, that’s clear. Bu the convoluted plot and set up didn’t match that simple goal. The Wolf wanted Chris dead and apparently all his works and family with him.

The ending sums up the overall flavor of the book: People died and no one gained.

84 Ribbons – 1950s Ballet and Romance by Paddy Eger

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84 Ribbons by Paddy Eger follows Marta, seventeen, alone in Billings Montana in 1957 and just starting her career as a professional ballerina. All Marta ever wanted to do was dance. Dance when her feet were a mass of blisters, dance when she was exhausted, even dance on stilts with little kids pushing against her legs.

This is an unusual and very enjoyable book. Although Marta and her friends are all young, the book shouldn’t be considered YA fiction. Young people will love it for the characters and the underlying passionate love of dance; older adults will appreciate the characters, setting and the plot that has no perfect ending.

Marta falls in love with Steve, a college student trying to build a journalism career, but she’s committed to ballet. She cannot give Steve her heart because she gave it to dance long ago.

Some of the best parts of the story happen with Mrs. B, Marta’s landlady and soon her friend, and Marta’s fellow boarders. Mrs. Be is said to be a wonderful, warm-hearted woman and proves that true, over and over. She allows Marta to pay part her rent by helping in the kitchen and helps her set up a basement room as a practice studio and she helps Marta after a bad accident.

Marta’s matter of fact daily grind should be mandatory reading for anyone thinking of a career in dance, theatre, art or music. Marta has practice with the ballet company for 7-8 hours a day, 6 days a week, then she practices in the basement on the off days and some evenings. She has little time or money and no energy.

Marta is 5 feet tall and weighs 100 pounds and doesn’t dare gain weight. She starts using diet pills to get an energy boost – this is in 1957 when diet aids full of caffeine and dangerous ingredients like amphetamines. The diet pills work for a while but she has no underlying physical strength and isn’t able to heal after an accident. She is an emotional wreck too, unable to tell Steve her feelings and covering up her diet pill use from her best friend, Steve and her mom. I was impressed with Steve for seeing beneath the crabbiness and being so patient with Marta.

It’s only after Marta loses her position in the ballet company, for at least the next year, that she is able to admit to Steve that she loves him. She’s still only 18, and wisely decides to go home to Bremerton to decide what comes next. She and Steve don’t get engaged and they don’t make plans. Instead Marta tells him “I’m trying to figure things out. One thing I do know is that I love you.”

The title “84 Ribbons” comes from Marta’s goal to be a solo dancer. Dancers must practice and practice and go through shoes after pairs of shoes. She cuts off the ribbons from her worn out ballet shoes with the hope of getting a solo part by the time she collects 84 ribbons. She has 20 ribbons at the beginning of the novel and 84 at the end, but no solo. Instead Marta, no longer a professional dancer, must now decide her future.

The enjoyable characters, realistic ending, grueling daily routines, snubs and nasty comments make 84 Ribbons come to life. I recommend this for anyone who enjoys coming of age stories, dance, or squeaky clean romances.

I was given a copy of 84 Ribbons. My opinions are solely my own.

Fairytale Apocalypse The Verge #1 Jacqueline Patricks

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Fairytale Apocalypsetic Fantasy was good in parts, overall OK, while I was reading it, but I had to go back to the novel to refresh my memory to write this review. A really good book sticks in your mind more than a day or two.

The plot is complicated. Believing she is called to be the Lady of the Verge, Lauren crosses into the elven realm at the castle of Lord Kagan Donmall, the Protector of the Verge. Lauren’s twin sister, Tessa, has looked out for Lauren, or in Lauren’s mind, bossed and fussed and kept from having fun, follows in a panic. Tessa has to fight her way through the Verge, and reaches Lord Kagan’s castle just as Kagan and Lauren are sealing their engagement. Lauren’s arrival causes the castle to catastrophically fail, pushes Kagan, Lauren and Tessa back to earth. Lauren gets home just in time to see her parents and home burn in a fire. Kagan gets stuck at the crossing between elven lands and earth. Lauren gets home around the same tiem as Tessa.

Lauren’s home isn’t the only thing destroyed. Most of the earth is a wasteland; most people are shells and no one can have children any more. We next see Lauren and Tessa living in a bunker community, sheltering from the empty people and raiders. Kagan shows up, gets into fights, then Tessa gets kidnapped by raiders, Tessa and Kagan and others go to the rescue. And on. Of course everything ends up just as it should. Tessa and Kagan fall in love and the earth turns back to its green loveliness; Lauren goes back to the elves’ home to be Lady of the Verge.

The plot was far more complicated than this synopsis. I didn’t mention the many people who die or get introduced but we never see again, or the goddess-type creature who calls Lauren to the elven land or how the Verge has been losing its magic, or the agreement another elven lord, Damin, makes with a demon, or Laruen’s spurned lover or any of the other umpteen things that happen.

The plot is pretty good, although I thought the ending was ridiculous; the earth magically goes back itself because Kagan and Tessa stop being mad at each other. What about all the people and animals and plants that died? Did they come back too?

The setting was interesting. Kagan lives in the land of the Fae, which connects to our earth via a bridge. The Fae lands have declined and faded the last many years which worries Kagan and is the reason he is willing to marry Tessa when she arrives and announces she was sent by Danu to be the Lady of the Verge. The bunker on wasteland earth was sketched in enough we got a good idea of the miserable conditions.

Characters were predictable with few sidekicks who added humor or dark interest, like Stan the dim bunker guy and Damin the would-be villian. Tessa was a bit much. You would think after 5 years of wasteland earth she’d stop interfering and taking care of Lauren. Nope, even at the end she’s still fretting. Lauren was selfish and shallow. She was 16 at the beginning so selfish and shallow are the job description, but she didn’t grow out of it. Kagan was unpleasant and unattractive, convinced of his own wonderfulness and high status.

The Fae are unpleasant. Kagan remembers wars fought over an insult, bloodthirsty, overly proud people, just like he is.

I don’t know that I would have finished Fairytale Apocalypse – A Romance of Apocalyptic Proportions: Epic Romantic Fantasy (The Verge Book 1) had I not been given a copy with the expectation of a review. It was OK, not bad or boring. None of the characters were appealing or people I want to spend time with, the complicated plot seemed endless and I had to push myself to finish the last third. Overall I’d give this three stars, perfectly decent if you like fantasy.