More Books than Time

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

Like Armor? Fantasy Novel The Red Knight – Miles Cameron

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If you like armor or sword and sorcery or just fantasy / alternate history novel you’ll enjoy The Red Knight (The Traitor Son Cycle). The novel is billed as book one of The Traitor Son Cycle, with book two recently published.

The Red Knight is the first fantasy by Miles Cameron, who has written historical fiction under a different name. The Red Knight is heavy with medieval combat, armor, knighthood, set in Alba which is somewhat similar to England.  They are at odds with The Wild, a poorly defined bunch of humans and non-humans, many with magic.  The Wild wants to take back their former stronghold, which a religious order now owns and is using as a convent.  It is the Abbess of this convent who hires the Red Knight’s mercenary company for security.

The Red Knight is complicated and long, over 600 pages, with at least 6 main groups of characters and over 50 individually named people. When I finally got to about page 500 I started skimming a little since some of the character groups did not seem germane to the story and did not interest me.

This story sprawls over and could benefit from editing. Do we really need to know the Sossig bands? They are barbarians in conflict with the Kingdom of Alba who played a peripheral role in the story, yet we had a good 50 pages and another 10 or so characters. The drovers and their group also did not seem important and didn’t add much. The last episode where they visit the Wyrm is a set up for sequels, but again, adds little except word count.

Two big improvements would be a list of characters and a map to make it easier to keep track of the people and places. Some characters had the same last names or similar first names that made them hard to keep straight.

Another huge improvement would be to cut down on the armor and weapons descriptions. Over and over and over we get to read about the armor, how costly, how heavy, how time consuming to put on and take off. Rinse and repeat, and then do it all over again. Frankly, I’m not real interested in armor. Tell me once and I’m happy. The author says in his Afterword that he is involved in medieval re-enactments and the novel shows his expertise. But unless you are really interested in swords and bill hooks and gauntlets and and and, you won’t care and you’ll wish he just GOT ON WITH IT.

These are flaws that made reading longer and a bit tedious, but overall the book is good. There were a few surprises.

One odious character was the Galle (aka French?) pompous knight, who said with complete sincerity that his sword was all the justification he needed to exert low, middle and high justice. He killed two squires, burnt an inn and threw the town constable tied up into a stable. Why? Because the innkeeper and the squires’ knight didn’t immediately recognize his innate superiority and give him the best room.

I expected that this creep would take the Lancelot approach and try to win over the Queen, but that never happened.

Another was that the Queen and the Abbess both play prominent roles and are figures of power. And the Red Knight does not win his fair lady.

Besides adding a map and character list, editing out a few groups of characters, telling us only once about each piece of armor and weapon, there are a few other factors that limited my enjoyment.

  • We never learn much about the main character, the Red Knight. We get glimpses, but little background and very limited character development.
  • The world building is sketchy.   Alba is a land that is recovering from a massive fight with The Wild a generation ago. Clearly there should be a lot going on politically and personally, but we don’t see it.
  • There are allusions to political brangles and possibly traitorous vassals, but I’d have liked more meat as that would explain a great deal of the back story.
  • For some reason Alba has a major agricultural fair at the convent, even though it is implied to be out of the way.  That begs the question of why there?  What’s going on behind the scenes that keeps a convent and its territory as the prime destination for millions of gold pieces?
  • We don’t know much about The Wild. Some are monstrous, some are described as “guardians” or “just folks” yet will eat their human enemies alive.
  • The magic system is sketchy.

I enjoyed The Red Knight enough to look for the second book. But if The Fell Sword (Book 2 The Traitor Son Cycle) is another 600 page rehash of armor, weapons and irrelevant characters then I won’t finish it.

Hunted, Book Six in Iron Druid Chronicles, Kevin Hearne Fantasy Book Review

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Finally the most recent book in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicals, Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six), came to my library. I’ve been waiting for it. The Iron Druid stories are not my favorite fantasy series by a long shot – there is something just missing that’s subtle but important – but I enjoyed the books enough to want to know how Atticus, Granuaile and Oberon would wrap things up, avoid the Olympians and head off Ragnarok.  You can read my prior reviews here:  Iron Druid Chronicles Series by Kevin Hearne

Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six) is still missing something. It marked the first time that Atticus reflected on the truly horrible choices he made that caused the Norse, Roman and Greek pantheons to all want him dead. That was an important step because it was frustrating to read a character making dumb choice after immoral choice after really dumb choice book after book. Those choices did not make sense for character who had lived 2100 years by lying low and avoiding trouble.

Hunted doesn’t feel like a complete story. It gets Atticus and crew squared away with the Greeks and Romans – or most of them – and we see evidence that he’s on great terms with Odin, the Norse godlet that previously sought his blood. But we don’t see a conclusion, more ongoing magic and trouble while Atticus, Granuaile and Oberon run for their lives from Romania to England. There is a section at the end that feels almost like a throwaway subplot where Atticus nearly gets nailed by a manticore. It’s a set up for seventh book where we’ll learn who of the Tuatha Dé Danann has it in for him.

My library’s edition included the novella Two Ravens and One Crow which explained how Atticus ended up good buddies with Odin. That was good because my first reaction reading the good cheer between the groups was huh? It’s been a few months since I read the last one, but surely I would remember who had Atticus on their Kill List.

Previous novels featured the dog Oberon and developed him as a character.  Hunted tells the story from Granuaile’s point of view but we don’t really learn anything more about her other than she loves being a druid and loves the connection to the earth. Atticus worries that she’s developing a bit of self-righteous violence and we see that, but it’s only hinted at and left as possible future conflict. Hunted does not develop the characters or the story line all that much. It wraps up some sub plots, especially with the extra novella, but it only touches on the whole vampire/Lief conflict. The book has more magic than some of the earlier ones, but it’s just that, magic, sort of poof! and good things happen.

In hindsight, I particularly enjoyed the earlier novels where Atticus took a proactive role, pushing the narrative, while in Hunted he is reactive. He reacts to the Olympian threat by running; he manages to magically heal himself after being shot; he escapes the manticore.

It just isn’t enough.  I will read the seventh book when it comes out, but if this were the first book I had read in the series it would have been the only book I read.

The Circle of Sorcerers, Mages of Bloodmyr Fantasy, Brian Kittrel

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About all I can say about The Circle of Sorcerers: A Mages of Bloodmyr Novel: Book #1 is that I managed to read it in a couple of hours.  My Nook said it had 629 pages, but each page was only one Nook screen; I’d guess this would be 300 pages in a real book.  It was a fast read but not a good read.

There wasn’t anything really wrong with this, just there wasn’t anything very good either. The world building was mediocre; characters were bland and dull; plot was interesting but sketchy.

The main characters are 16 year old men from a small village.  The hero Laedron is off to learn to be a sorcerer under the tutelage of Ismeralda. The backdrop to the story is a religious controversy that spills into war. Ismeralda is murdered by leaders of the Heraldan church, Laedron escapes and joins a militant order of mages and knights. He meets up again with his friends from his village who coincidentally also are in the same order and they are assigned to assassinate one of the church leaders.

The plot has promise but it never really works out and I could not get interested enough to care about the characters. The odd thing was Kittrel only sketched the plot and back story, but spent paragraphs describing the food they ate. I almost stopped reading after the first two page description of Leadron’s mom’s cooking. It felt like the author got paid by the word and it was easier to describe food than characters, setting or plot.

I got this after seeing many highly complimentary reviews on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  In fact both sites have this at a 4 star rating. I would give this a 3, decent, not great. It was free of those obnoxious grammatical and spelling errors we see in so many free or low cost E books, and had been edited. The biggest disappointment was to get to page 629 and realize the book just stops. It is apparently the first of a trilogy (of course, what else). I don’t intend to read the other two books.

A Diamond in My Pocket, Lorena Angell, YA Fantasy, First In A Series

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I have been reading a lot but not writing reviews; it’s time to get back into blogging.  One way I find new authors is from the “people who liked this also bought” links at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  Another is from the site BookBub.  They send a daily newsletter with books in your preferred genre that are free or heavily discounted.  Since I like books and don’t want to spend a fortune, this is a good thing.

Today’s book, A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), came from BookBub. It was free and frankly, I am glad I didn’t pay anything for it.

There isn’t anything wrong with A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), it just isn’t very good. It features 16 year old Calli Courtnae who suddenly can run like the wind. She develops even more powers after being entrusted with a magical diamond to carry in secret to deliver to the Death Clan.

I think you can see the problem right there. “Powers”, “magic diamonds”, “Death Clan”. I don’t have a problem with ideas like this – after all fantasy is my favorite genre and we know fantasy novels are full of nutty sounding stuff. But the constant repetition about “powers” got tiresome. Couple that with a typical 16 year old girl’s normal worries about cute guys and you have a book that teens will love and we adults, sadly, not so much.

A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered) has over 4 1/2 stars on Amazon and is #3000 in the Free Kindle section. I’m not sure quite why it is so popular. It’s reasonably well written, without terrible grammar that plagues so many free E books. The plot is interesting and the characters are so-so. I read it to the end and was reasonably entertained, but it left too many strings hanging and is obviously set up for a sequel.

Mostly I just got tired of the “powers” stuff and how Courtney could peek in someone’s head and see their future. Courtney tried different decisions in her head until she found an outcome she liked. Gee, that’s handy. Yoda said it best: “Difficult to see is the future, always in motion.” Courtney had no problem at all. Not only could she see the future but she could play around with it, make a different decision in her head, and see a different future. That got silly.

I’d give it 3 stars for the dangling strings and over-the-top “powers”.

The Silver Star Jeannette Walls Contemporary Fiction

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The Silver Star: A Novel by Jeannette Walls is my first encounter with this gifted author. Overall I found the book exquisite, well-written, several interesting and challenging themes, and some excellent characters.

However, although the book moved well in some sections it badly dragged in others. It is marketed to adults, not to kids, but I think middle school and older would enjoy it and probably find the characters familiar. We all know people like Bean and her sister Liz. I hope most of us don’t have a mother like theirs, feckless, all too ready to run and to blame everyone else for everything. Sadly most of us have known someone like Jerry Maddox, the foreman at the mill who employs Bean and Liz to get back at their uncle and to demonstrate his absolute power.

The story plays out against the backdrop of integration in a small Virginia town, where the white star football player would rather lose than to throw to a black receiver, where Jerry Maddox feels free to slap and fondle the employees on his shift, where Liz and Bean’s Uncle Tinsley lives in a decaying mansion, managing on what is left from his inheritance. The integration plot line is barely sketched in. It is not the focus of the novel, simply background, which is fine since the story revolves around Bean.

The most interesting character is Bean’s mother, a loose and immature actress and singer wannabe who has never acted in a movie or recorded a song. Yet she sees herself as the victim of her hometown and her family while she chases the next new thing. Bean loves her but learns all too well how erratic and unstable her mother is, and how even her children aren’t motivation to act responsibly and grow up.

Overall this is excellent. I don’t know that I want to read the other books by Jeannette Walls as they share similar themes of children overcoming adult bullying and parental neglect.  I’ll choose a happy story any day.

One-Eyed Man: A Fugue with Winds and Accompaniment L E Modesitt Science Fiction

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I stayed up till midnight to finish The One-Eyed Man: A Fugue, With Winds and Accompaniment, the latest novel by my favorite author L. E. Modesitt. The book had some problems but I enjoyed it overall. In fact I will re-read it, as I do most of his books, to catch the nuances.

The hero, Paulo Verano an ecologist from the world Bachman, is sent to evaluate the ecological impact and risks that humans may have to the world Stittara. The book mentions several times that Stittara would be abandoned were it not for it being the source of anagathics, drugs that enable people to maintain their looks and health nearly to the end of their lives.

Paulo knows he is getting into a risky area. The anagathics are enormously profitable and no one would want to abandon the planet. Yet there are some strange phenomena, including sky tubes, never fully defined but apparently long structures that float in the sky. No one has ever been able to sample a sky tube and there has been speculation they may be alive, similar to jelly fish. Paulo is well aware that the government that hired him hopes he comes back with a nice, safe, sanitized study that shows no ill effects to the environment from humans.

It’s clear that the Unity government cares deeply about the environment and forbids damage to alien life. There are (of course) opposition parties and it is due to pressure from one of these parties, the Deniers, that Paulo is hired to conduct his study. It’s not at all clear what the issue is that the study is supposed to appease, but it isn’t germane to the story.

There are subplots but they are sketched. There is tension between the outlanders and the city folks; between the corporations doing research on the Stittaran natural anagathics and the Service, between the planetary council and the Unity Survey Service, and more. For some reason Modesitt sketches these but does not explore them. We see characters from each of these groups but their motivations are unclear and the reasons behind the tensions are not revealed.

Modesitt showed the political wrangling by letting us eavesdrop on bits of conversations between plotting members of the groups. These conversations were never complete, never enough to tell you what the characters wanted or feared. I felt like the subplots were dangled in front of us, then whisked behind a curtain just as we got close enough to see the rationale.

There were some annoyances. Modesitt again made spelling changes, duhlars for dollars, that were silly. We got a little economic diatribe about taxation. Interesting, yes, I always find Modesitt’s ideas worth consideration, but it did nothing for the story.

Several of the characters made no sense at all. They were not cardboard cutouts, but their motivation and exactly who they were and why they mattered wasn’t at all clear. The Syntex succession shenanigans added a plot twist and motivation, but hardly deserved the pages Modesitt spent.

I felt as if I were Paulo, muddling through the tensions and people, all with different objectives that none ever wanted to state and with ecological impacts that he could almost see but never measure. Those parts were frustrating.

The actual environmental sampling and trips were dull. Paulo found nothing, yet he knew there was something. We could tell there was something with the sky tubes and the ever-present purple and gray grass that had not changed in millions of years. One of the corporations planned a deep drilling test that would touch the planet’s core. Paulo found that horrifying. Yes, it seems like a very bad idea to drill a hole down to the molten planetary core, but this was somehow connected with organisms like the sky tubes and space. I re-read this part and still didn’t quite get it.

The ending was solid in that Paulo shares his thinking with us as the sky tubes, drilling, alien predecessors from 150 million years ago. But it felt so rushed. And it was incomplete. We didn’t get real answers about the sky tubes, or any more insight into Stittara.

As usual Modesitt built in a love story with a strong female character. This part reminded me of the The Ecologic Envoy, where the two are afraid to love, haven’t spent much time together, yet feel a sense of connection. The other parallel is that the characters must leave and go elsehwere.

The Unity government didn’t make sense. It’s mentioned that Stittara is over 73 light-years from Bachman and it takes about 75 years to reach, although far less for the traveler due to relativity. The fastest way to send a message is by physically taking it. If one can only communicate at the speed of light, then star systems must be close together. Characters mentioned the time delay several times, noting that after 150 years no one at Bachman will care about Paulo’s study. Given the delays, how does one have a central government with Unity-wide elections.

I always enjoy Modesitt’s novels with their strong sense of morality, multiple layers, challenging plots and characters. I didn’t like this as well as some others but it was still worth reading. Did I mention staying up till midnight to finish?

Ask Bob: A Novel by Peter Gethers Can a Vet Find Love Writing a Pet Advice Column?

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Before Ask Bob: A Novel the only books I read by Peter Gethers were about Norton, his wonderful cat. I loved the Norton books although I wasn’t quite sure I loved the author; he’s a bit fond of himself for my taste.

Ask Bob: A Novel substitutes Dr. Robert Heller for Peter Gethers narrating, but it is otherwise unmistakably by the same author. They are stylistically similar and the main human characters share common qualities and attitudes.

Dr. Bob is a young veterinarian beginning his practice in Manhattan. He and his beloved wife Anna live in the small upstairs apartment above both the practice and his partner’s larger apartment. Bob takes in strays that show up at the practice, human and animal, beginning with Rocky a small cat.

He begins to write a pet advice column in “New York’s most popular newspaper”. I enjoyed reading the introductions to each Ask Bob letter to see how he progressed, from an occasional appearance on television to a regular appearance, and from one book to three. The pet advice column was great, especially the grammatical lesson.

Ask Bob: A Novel moves quickly through the early years. Bob was so very happy with Anna and devastated when she dies of cancer. He does find love again, twice in fact, but you do have to wonder about his heart. The relationship with the last lady puzzled me. It started with instant desire but I never could see where the true love, the love that is based on one’s will and heart, vs. based only on one’s emotions and lust, was built. I did not find the character believable or likable.

The book is structured as a series of vignettes that together flow from one to the next, with Letters to Ask Bob acting as dividers between mini stories and as counterpoint. The Bob letters usually have some tie in to the vignettes.

I found a few annoyances. One was the constant reference to dysfunctional families. Bob, Anna and Bob’s eventual second wife, all came from families one could call “dysfunctional”. But don’t we all have some degree of oddness in our families? Bob describes Anna’s family as atrocious and Anna herself called her parents abusive, but when he and Anna visit them the family comes across more as sad than as awful. Anna’s mother behaved terribly at her funeral, but the other members simply were different, not living as fully as they could. Dr. Bob, (apparently as does Peter Gethers himself) does not believe in God and doesn’t miss many opportunities to say so.

What made the book excellent was Dr. Bob’s growth as a full human, not only as Dr. Heller or as Anna’s husband, but as a son, as an uncle, as a friend, as a pet owner. The man who started out feeling vulnerable and alone finds happiness with people and in his ability to give to them and to take from them in love.

Overall I enjoyed this very much and give it 5 stars.

Beautiful Day: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand Nantucket Romance Wedding Story

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Beautiful Day: A Novel is the first book I’ve read by Elin Hilderbrand. It is set on Nantucket, a location I found fascinating in Island Girls by Nancy Thayer. When I browsed Island Girls on Amazon this book, Beautiful Day came up as a “if you liked” recommendation.

I had a like / not-like reaction to Beautiful Day. I found the relationships and emotional conflicts interesting, especially in the oldest sister Margot’s guilt over her affair with her father’s partner and her betrayal of a job seeker.

But – and this is a big but – I didn’t like the characters. Bride Jenna is spoiled and silly. Supposedly she is dedicated to helping people, environmentalism, ethical mining, so on and so forth. In reality she spent $180,000 on her wedding. Really? I believe people have the right to spend their money as they choose, although I would never spend even a tenth of that on a single day, but is it consistent with a true champion of the poor? No, it is not.

Doug, Jenna’s dad, is unhappy. He is married to a woman he doesn’t love, Pauline. He misses his dead wife Beth so much it prevents him from being happy with someone else or even growing up enough to face the consequences of his rather aimless agreement to marry Pauline.

The rest of the group are no better. I didn’t like the characters and found the plot silly. There are other missteps.

For example, bride Jenna is a teacher at a low income school. She invited several of her fellow teachers to her wedding and they came. Yes, they managed to afford a 1) boat or plane trip to Nantucket, 2) a dress to fit in with a very rich crowd, 3) a hotel room on Nantucket in July on a weekend. Nope, I don’t buy that. Unless all her friends are the same as she, little rich girls playing at solidarity with the poor, it’s ridiculous.

Margot’s supposed lover, her father’s partner, turns out to have a very young real girlfriend. He used Margot and Margot, supposedly a super smart woman and great judge of character, fell for it.

Margot’s and Jenna’s mother Beth wrote Jenna the Notebook before she died with directions for her wedding.  It’s a lovely sentiment but the wonderful, loving mother that all seem to worship came across to me as careless, obsessed with material perfection and manipulative.  She suggested Jenna could wear her dress, but of course she didn’t have to, although she, Beth, was crying just thinking how lovely her little girl would be.   If Beth had been alive she would have been ghastly.

Lastly over half the bunch were cheaters.  Newlywed girl cheating with the best man.  Groom’s dad cheating with a woman, having a child.

Even the lovely Nantucket was scarcely shown.  Instead of seeing the gorgeous island sun all we read about is the 40% chance of rain.

Maybe it’s me.  This is not the type of book I usually read, but I found Island Girls by Nancy Thayer so enjoyable and liked the light, fluffy relationship story so much that I borrowed several by Nancy Thayer and similar authors from the library. I thought I’d found a new genre and new authors to enjoy.  So far all have disappointed. Guess I’m just not into wow ’em weddings, fancy clothes, cheaters and whiny brides.

Short Stories from Intergalactic Crime to Cat Rescues Novellas Kira Bacal

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I love trying new authors and one of the best ways is to browse the free or cheap books for my Nook.  Kira Bacal is a doctor who worked at NASA and the Senate before moving to New Zealand.  She published seven free Nook novellas, all enjoyable, easy reads.   I’ll cover three in this post.

All I Need to Know about the Earth, I Learned in Kindergarten

What do you do when you’re an intergalactic criminal and need a safe, quiet hideaway?  Why come to Earth and teach kindergarten of course.  “Miss Buttercup” is leading her classroom out to catch their buses home when one of the kids steps into the road, right in front of a car.  Miss Buttercup can move much faster than humans and rescues the child, however there is a witness:  Mrs. Weinbaum, an 80 year old crossing guard.

Mrs. Weinbaum asks Miss Buttercup to come to her home where they agree to a mutually advantageous outcome.

This story is not deep but it is well-written and entertaining.  I enjoyed Miss Buttercup and her penchant for helping her human students and would love to read a longer story with her as a main character.

Look What the Cat Dragged In

Would you answer the door during a howling blizzard if you live alone in a remote cabin?  Our main character does and lets in a young kitten she names Amber.  Amber has deformed front legs that don’t let her walk normally and our heroine is mildly curious how she managed to make it to her doorstep before freezing in the snow.

A few weeks later she learns the answer when Amber’s real people show up…

I liked the characters in this one too, but especially enjoyed the ambiguity around the pronouns “She is protecting it”.  Who is the “she” and who is the “it”?  This was a fun fast read, possibly the weakest of the stories yet well worth the time.

The Ananaki

This one was different from the others.  Still had a science fiction background, but the main character is a fishing captain on a backward planet.  Some unscrupulous folks convinced the locals they were “gods”, “Ananaki” and provided an amulet and altar for communication and punishment.

Luckily for our hero his latest passenger, a rescued young man, does not believe in the Ananaki and damages the altar.  That damages causes the amulet to instead contact a military or police vessel (we never learn who) that manages to disabuse the natives of the Ananaki’s perfection and removes the Ananaki from the planet.

I enjoyed the dialogue and the style of this one very much.  The story was good and we learned just enough of the people to see there was trouble afoot.  The “gods” were mean and greedy, not the sort anyone wants around.  The middle of the novella dragged just a bit when the captain and his rescued atheist argue but the rest was very good.

All told I’d give these 4 to 5 stars.  Excellent, fun reads, perfect to spend a few minutes enjoyably.

Note to readers:  For some reason the spell checker in Word Press isn’t working very well – or else I”m not making any typos or misspellings.  Ha, not too likely!

Good Story, Lots of Suspense, Bit of a Fizzle at the End Images of Betrayal Claire Collins

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One way I like to find new authors and books I might not otherwise read is to get free Nook books and then check out the “people also bought” selections for the ones I like.  It works most of the time.  In fact the biggest problem is the sheer number of free Nook books available!  When I shop via my Nook and search by price, the second sort criteria is title and there are so many that I’ve never gotten past the free books with titles starting with “A”.

I don’t remember how I found Images Of Betrayal by Claire Collins (which is not free) and I wasn’t sure what I was getting. The blurb says “He possesses the remarkable ability to take photographs of events that have not yet happened.” Will this be fantasy? Science fiction? Suspense? Or? The Amazon blurb hints it’s not a fantasy about a guy who really can photograph the future: “Walker-her apparent savior, David-her new admirer”. Kinda gives it away a bit; it’s Photoshop, not a time machine.

Plot and Characters

Tysan is 17 years old and the left behind kid from her parents’ divorce.  Her mom got custody of the four younger kids and her Dad got her.  Unfortunately Dad forgot about earning a  living, paying bills and has neither interest nor intention to take care of Tysan.  In fact Dad left and left Tysan behind.  She dropped out of school to wait tables to pay the bills and working the day shift at a steakhouse she can barely make enough to stay alive.

Enter Walker, a guy in his 20s, who chats up Tysan at the restaurant and shows her some photos he took of her that show people she knows, situations she has been in, and photos he claims are of the future.  The future is horrifying, showing Tysan horribly burnt.  Walker asks Tysan to come to his home the day that the fire is supposed to occur.  Indeed, the restaurant explodes, a couple people are killed, Tysan’s friend Sheila is hurt.  She leaves Walker’s home and goes back to her own apartment terrified, shaken and now jobless.

Sheila is kind and generous and knows well that Tysan is barely able to keep her apartment.  Sh asks Tysan to come stay with her family for a while, at least until she finds another job.  Tysan and Sheila’s popular, 18 year old son David soon are on the edge of an affair.  That’s as much as I can say without spoiling the book for you.

The characters are moderately well done.  Tysan’s conversation is authentic and her relationship with her sister feels real.  Her parents are monumentally selfish, but believable too.  Sheila, Mike and David are a little less believable and Walker is only sketched in.

The Good Parts

Tysan was so convinced by Walker that we readers are almost convinced too, at least enough to get into the story and go along with it. Images Of Betrayal is fast moving, with enough suspense and creepiness to engage.

The Bad Parts

What parent in their right mind would think it was a good idea to let their teenaged son and their almost foster daughter play house in the basement?  I know lots of kids indulge in sex and lots of people don’t see anything wrong with it, but any parent who thinks it’s a great idea and encourages their kids has rocks in their heads.  Kids, especially naive vulnerable 17 year old girls who have been abandoned by their families, do not have great judgement and if you add sex to already heightened emotions, plus the hormonal stew pot, you are setting that girl up for misery.  How many teens stay happily in love with the same person from age 17 forever?  And how hard would it be for that girl to break up if she should decide to do so?

Yet this is what Sheila and Mike do at the end when they offer Tysan a home and offer to fix up the basement for her and David to share as their own home.  This is the romantic equivalent of buying the booze for your kids to have a big drinking party.

4 Stars except for the ending