More Books than Time

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

Nasty Ghosts and So So Book – The Spookshow by Tim McGregor

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The blurb for The Spookshow: (Book 1) describes the plot: Billie Culpepper accompanies her friends to an abandoned house with dark reputation.  What the blurb leaves out is the rest of the story.  First they find a long-dead body surrounded by satanic markings and secondly, the nastiest ghost goes home with Kaitlin, the instigator of the let’s-explore-the-haunted house visit.

The book was so-so.  I didn’t care for any of the characters and the story was boring.  There’s no conclusion; the book just stops.  Two stars.

As the title implies The Spookshow is the first book of a planned series.  I won’t read the others.

Sower of Dreams by Debra Holland, Classic Fantasy with Romantic Touch

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The cover of Sower of Dreams (The Gods’ Dream Trilogy Book 1) includes an Andre Norton quote endorsing the novel as “outstanding and well presented fantasy” and the author credits Norton’s Witchworld series as inspiring her book. How could I not read it?

Sower of Dreams does not disappoint.  It reminded me of some Andre Norton stories with the enigmatic and never explained portals that terminate in ruined cities on different worlds, and the mood was reminiscent of Norton’s work too, a combination of dreaming, fear, running, love and standing up finally for one’s self and one’s loves.

I enjoyed the simplicity of the character set.  We have major players Khan, exiled from earth to flee his murderous half brother, Daria, princess of Seagem, Thaddis, newly crowned king of ally Ocean’s Glory, Amir, envious half brother to Khan, plus assorted friends and family members.  I appreciate books where the characters have reasonably short, memorable names (as opposed to those with lots of consonants and apostrophes).

Characters and setting were well done as was the romance between Daria and Khan and the tension and fear as they seek ways to build a life together.  I wasn’t altogether pleased with how easily Daria rejected her “god” Yadarius or her father’s charge to be the queen.  Her actions fit the story (better than the alternatives), they just sounded a sour note in the background.

True to the Andre Norton spirit author Holland constructs lovable creatures, monkey bats Shad and Shir, who become friends with Khan and Daria.  Also true to the Norton spirit, the author presents both villains with an opportunity to choose the wise and moral path and both villains spurn the choice.

Also like Norton author Holland left some dangling pieces to use in follow up novels, whether separate series or sequels.  One is Khan’s earth friend Jasmine escapes via the mysterious portal in the middle of the earth desert to a foggy, shadowed land.  Another is the political fallout and restitution between Ocean’s Glory and Seagem once Thaddis’s soldier Boerk takes Thaddis back to Ocean’s Glory.  The last string is the missing Pasinea, a nasty lady whose “power is temporarily depleted”.

The book is not complex nor challenging, a gentle, enjoyable read with interesting characters and familiar mood.

As the title notes, Sower of Dreams is the first in a trilogy.  The excerpt for book two, Reaper of Dreams, shows us that Daria’s beloved oldest brother Indaran still lives, a prisoner of an evil “god”.  It would be interesting to see how Holland ties the Jasmine and Pasinea strings into the Indaran story.

Four stars if you are in the mood, three stars if  you want something a bit meatier.

The Phoenix Ring – Fantasy Novel by Alexander Brockman

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The Phoenix Ring (The Thunderheart Chronicles Book 1) uses the standard fantasy plot “Boy Discovers He Is a Wizard and Saves the World” and mixes in some fun elements and characters.  Aiden, the hero (who discovers he is a wizard) has help from Timothy, a normal wizard from a normal wizard family, and from Aaliyah, a magic-resistant amogh.  Aiden leaves home for the big city to join the King’s Rangers but gets recruited/forced into the wizards and sent to their school Fort Phoenix to learn wizardry.

Besides the character count and school background The Phoenix Ring is not much like Harry Potter.  Aiden is angry, as in furious, all the time, although we readers don’t see much to be angry about during much of it.  The anger helps fuel his magic and he is powerful.  He masters some elements of magic immediately and takes the Phoenix Ring that had been Marcus Thunderheart’s until Marcus left physical existence 63 years earlier when fighting Macommmer and his renegade wizards and dragons.  We then get a bit of whining, a trip, a few side trips and then conflict with the renegade Edwin.

Good Points

There are some fun plot twists and the book is an easy, extremely fast read (about 2 hours and that includes stopping for tea).

The subplot with Timothy and goblin Grogg is excellent and author Brockman could have done more with it.  The Phoenix Ring would have been richer and more complex and enjoyable had Brockman added more subplots like this one.

Bartemus and the other adult wizards appear sparingly during the novel which is a shame as they are interesting characters.

Not So Good Points

There is almost no transition between points of view and even between physical locations and times and this gets confusing and tiresome.  Even if the author didn’t want to say “meanwhile back at the ranch…” he could indicate a change in viewpoint by typography, a line of asterisks or similar.

Character development is spotty.  We don’t see why Aiden is so angry nor learn much about Timothy.  Aaliyah is a cipher.

The characters live in an interesting world and I’d like to see Brockman do more with the setting, the back story and the magic system.

Summary

As the title shows, The Phoenix Ring is the first book in a fantasy series.  I don’t expect I’ll buy the next books in the series as this was just a bit better than OK, a solid 3 stars.

Amazon lists this as for older teens, which is probably right.  As an adult I found the book a bit too slapdash and lacking in the rich detail and conflicts that make fantasy believable.

Paranormal Chaos – Third Book in an Interesting Series

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I started Paranormal Chaos (The Shifter Chronicles) one evening when I was pretty tired and not feeling much like a challenge.  The book starts with a chase scene, Marcus and side kick Steve the Minotaur, running for their lives from a herd of centaurs.  Once they escape we flash back to Marcus’ thoughts on being asked to take on the mission to keep the Minotaurs, and by extension the centaurs, in the treaty between paranormal and normal humans.

I almost quit at this point.  Marcus and the Council do not get along.  This sounded familiar, the Harry Dresden series, the Alex Verus series, but dressed up with Minotaurs and centaurs.  I decided to keep on for a few more pages and I’m glad I did.  The book is a solid read, entertaining with interesting flashes to Greek mythology and glimpses of Root’s excellent world building.

Somewhere around page 50 it dawned on me this was likely the most recent book in a series, but that in no way inhibited reading.  Paranormal Chaos has its own adventures that do not rely on the prior novels.

Plot Summary

The backstory is humans and magically-endowed humans signed the Reformation Treaty about 20 years before and invited all the non-human sentient magical creatures – centaurs, Minotaurs, elves, Bookworms and more – to sign on too.  Now the Minotaur leader sent notice to the Council they are withdrawing from the treaty.  Council sends Marcus Shifter to bring them back into the fold.  Steve convinces best friend Steve to help.

Since this is a fantasy novel Steve is revealed to be the son of the Minotaur leader, the Alpha, and her expected heir.  There are disagreements among the Minotaur around how they should engage with every other species.  The Alpha wants to be hands off, leave everyone alone; Steve wants to adapt to the modern world and engage as a normal person; a faction led by Makha wants to re-establish the human/Minotaur cooperative domination (and tyranny) described in ancient Minotaur books and art.

Steve and Marcus discover Makha’s plans and run back to alert the Council and other species of impending attacks.  There is a short, brutal war which ends with most species agreeing to try again.

Fantasy Roundabouts

Several events in Paranormal Chaos don’t make a ton of sense but they help build the story.

  • Minotaurs remain fascinated with labyrinths and their rite of adulthood requires passing a maze with hostile creatures and death traps and emerging alive.  It’s not clear where the creatures and traps come from; we don’t see much (any) Minotaur magic.
  • The Underground was a handy device that you need to accept as part of the story and not try to understand.  (It wasn’t any clearer after I read the previous three books.)
  • Not at all clear exactly how or why the centaurs and Minotaurs ended up in northern Canada.  Both creatures were originally from the Mediterranean; even if one figures they fled when Rome got organized and made it unpleasant it seems odd they would go to Canada.
  • The whole war didn’t make a ton of sense either.  Makha didn’t know much about humans or how we would react if a bunch of odd guys started attacking and killing folks.  Since Minotaurs live in the real world they would be vulnerable to conventional human weapons.  (Makha had his own fruitcake ideas.)

Fun Points

Loved the Bookworms!  Of all the creatures named they were the best.

The ending was excellent, true to people nature.  “Now we figure out how to patch our worlds together.  But this time we do it as friends.”  “We struggled to deal with the shock of how close we’d come to being defeated by Makha.  And how much we all had to lose.”  Even so the Elves declined to do more than show up to meetings and the Vampires didn’t do that.

Summary

Author Joshua Roots did a great job building a compelling story using bits and pieces of myth, standard fantasy-in-a-box tropes, interesting characters and enough magic to make it flow.  After I finished Paranormal Chaos I bought the first two books featuring Marcus Shifter and Steve, Undead Chaos and Summoned Chaos.  They were also excellent; in fact the second, Summoned Chaos, was my favorite of the three.  Highly recommend all three for fantasy lovers.

Note:  I received a free advanced E copy from NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

 

Madness in Solidar – Imager Series – Resetting Priorities and Alliances

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Madness in Solidar: The Ninth Novel in the Bestselling Imager Portfolio (The Imager Portfolio) is a stand alone novel occurring 400 years after Quaeryt helped form the united kingdom of Solis and built the Imager Collegium in the 5 book Scholar series.  Unfortunately Quaeryt’s successors lacked his skill and drive (or ruthlessness) and the collegium has faded along with the unity of Solis overall.  Imagers are weak; training is not rigorous; the collegium takes golds from the Rex but provides little in return.  In Solis the Rex alternates between temper tantrums and unrealistic demands.  He lacks funds and demands a 20% tax increase and insists the collegium assassinate the High Holders from strongest to weakest until they agree.

Alastar, the new collegium Maitre, seeks a compromise while simultaneously battling his senior imagers to build up the curriculum, re-establish the collegium as a force and find alternative sources of funds.  No one wants a compromise and the senior imagers are conflicted with at least one actively against Alastar and his fellows.

It’s hard work to establish – or re-establish – foundations for any organization, and I admire Modesitt for building a book around the work.  Nonetheless, it’s not exciting. Alastar spends more than half the book meeting with people, realistic for any leader but nothing that makes enjoyable reading.

Best Points of Madness in Solidar

The plot is better in Madness than in Rex Regis or Antiagon Fire, the previous 2 Imager novels, with fewer pages spent describing long travel days.  There isn’t a lot of action but the story keeps moving.

The conflict feels more realistic, incohesion that turns into internal division that turns into treachery. Alastar has no good option when Rex Ryen demands a solution – his solution, his way – and threatens to destroy Alastar and the collegium unless they abet him in murder.  Alastar works to a solution, albeit not a happy one, that allows his imagers to survive and patches Solis together.

So-So Points

Like most Modesitt heroes, Alastar is decent, driven, hard working, agnostic, sensitive and individually powerful.  He doesn’t feel or read like a real person and I didn’t have an emotional connection to him or any of the other characters.

Rex Ryen and his family members are sketched out enough to be foils for Alastar, not fully developed characters.  However they respond consistently and there are no magic turnarounds where villains become good guys or vice versa.  The other imagers, High Holders and factors are likewise thin but sufficient.  The army commander is the weakest character, drawn so unlikable that I wonder why anyone would follow him.

Not Good Points

The worst part of the book is Modesitt’s interminable word play between characters.  It allows us to see how shiny bright and righteous Alastar is compared with the devious and greedy holders, but frankly, it’s boring.  After reading the last couple Modesitt books I’ve lost my tolerance for this stuff.

It’s also unbelievable.  I don’t know anyone who would talk that way.  “Acquiring some knowledge may be more costly than it is wise to purchase.”  This is one of the first sentences from the first High Holder Alastar sees.

Overall

Madness is a comedown from the first three Imager books, set several centuries later and from the excellent Scholar and Princeps yet such an improvement on the most recent few novels that I’m hoping Modesitt is back to creating novels full of plot with interesting characters, conflicts, setting, and with fewer verbal dances that show off the hero’s sterling qualities.

Overall I’d give Madness in Solidar a solid 3 stars and will read future books in the series.

Ponderous, Plodding and Platitudinous – Rex Regis by L. E. Modesitt

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I read and enjoyed the first two books in the second Imager series, Scholar and Princeps, both of which had Scholar Quaeryt working to build a world where imagers could survive and prosper.  Both books were fun to read, Quaeryt was interesting and ruler Bhayer’s problems in building a prosperous country were a worthy backdrop.

The book after Princeps, Imager’s Battalion, was a bit boring with pages upon pages of Quaeryt marching with the army, Quaeryt uncovering more about Rholyn, Quaeryt finding treachery within and without Bhayer’s army, Quaeryt helping other imagers develop their skills, Quaeryt proving over and over how important, skilled and humble a hero can be.

The series starts to fall apart in Antiagon Fire, which follows Imager’s Battalion, with the same problems of slow plot, endless army marches, hard-to-visualize terrain and setting, and our over-the-top hero bringing one more country under Bhayer’s governance.  Antiagon Fire includes a semi-supernatural sequence that adds little and feels out of place.

Rex Regis, the last book featuring Quaeryt (thank heavens), is more of the same, except even less action, no character development, and pages upon pages of humble head shaking as he sees his imagers rebuilding the city, pages of platitudes about force, power and greed’s corruption and endless comments about the lack of sexual equality in Modesitt’s quasi-medieval cultures.

The plot centers around army leaders Myskyl and Deucalon, both of whom Quaeryt distrusts and fears are treacherous.  Neither has reported to Bhayer and Quaeryt hears that Myskyl has collected and withheld tarrifs.

Sure enough, Myskyl is plotting with one of the High Holders to either take over from Bhayer or to carve out an independent realm in the north.  Bhayer sends Quaeryt to find out the facts.  Typical of the prior books, Quaeryt does more than investigate, he resolves the problem.  Several plotters and imagers die.

Just for grins I opened Rex Regis at random and pulled these comments:

“The land is everything to the High Holders and golds are everything to the factors…”
“…there’s more there than meets the eye in a first reading.  Just as there is with you, dearest.”
“There is always treachery, especially by those who are powerful, but for whom no amount of wealth and position will suffice…and seek forgetfulness in the elixir of power.”

Modesitt had used these same themes of greed, power, force, gender discrimination in most of his books.  His books are more effective and much more enjoyable when he uses a lighter touch, letting us readers see the problems vs. shoving them at us every single page.

Rex Regis is spoiled by the sheer length relative to anything actually happening or to character development, the vision sequence with Erion and the fact that Quaeryt is much less likeable as he gets ever more certain yet humble.   The book is at least twice as long as it needs to be.

On the good side Modesitt wraps up Quaeryt’s and Vaelora’s story and shows how the early imagers worked with Bhayer and the others to forge a new country.  Madness in Solidar, picks up the imager story a couple hundred years later, with all new characters (and a few less platitudes).

I’ve read every book Modesitt wrote and own many, but the deterioration in this Imager series and the similar plodding in his latest Recluce novels, decided me against purchasing any of his future books.  I’ll get them from the library.

 

 

My Favorite Fantasy – Borderlands Novels by Lorna Freeman

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Have you ever felt you just had to re-read a favorite book?  I just finished re-reading (for the third or fourth time) the three Borderlands novels by Lorna Freeman, Covenants, The King’s Own and Shadows Past.  Once again the wonderful, complete characters, excellent plot, intricate back story and strong narrative writing kept me reading and once again I found more to enjoy with each book.

I will review each book separately in upcoming posts; let’s look at the three overall first.

Characters

Rabbit, otherwise known as Lieutenant Lord Rabbit ibn Chause eso Flavan, tells all three novels.  Rabbit is the son of Two Trees and Lark, formerly high born nobles from Iversterre who fled to the Border to become farmers and weavers and raise eight children in the land of the fae and magical.  Rabbit had been apprenticed to Magus Kareste, but fled in fear and came back to Iversterre to be hide, becoming a horse trooper in the Royal Army.

Lorna Freeman does an excellent job showing us Rabbit who is a most enjoyable young man.  He is courageous, loyal and intelligent, yet fears his magic and wants no part of politics, whether in Iversterre or the Border.  Rabbit matures through the three novels as he faces and reconciles to his magic and demands on his person and loyalties.

Laurel, the mountain cat Faena, is come to Iversterre to seek peace in the face of blatant smuggling and murder – and to seek Rabbit on behalf of the Border High Counsel.

Other key characters are well rounded:  Captain Suiden, Captain Javes, Enchanter Wyln, King Jusson, even minor figures like Ryson and Thadro and the assorted villains and other players in each novel

Not Really a Trilogy

You would enjoy these the most by reading in sequence but it isn’t truly necessary.  The individual plots stand alone and each has unique characters for the competing parts.

Covenants

Covenants is the longest and most complex of the three.  Rabbit and his troop are lost in the very familiar mountains they routinely patrol near the small northern town of Freston.  Even though they know the area they cannot find their way until Rabbit meets Laurel in a small dell.  Laurel shares cakes with Rabbit and gives him a red feather, signifying a meal covenant.  Suddenly the troop can see the town below and the way is clear.  This is the first magical mystery, but not the last.

Laurel turns out to be the ambassador from the Border High Counsel, sent to Iversterre in a final attempt to broker peace.  This is a surprise to the King of Iversterre, Jusson, and most of his government, since they did not realize there was a problem.

Covenants moves very fast.  It is over 500 pages long and complex and you may – like I did – find you see even more the second time through.  Lorna Freeman tells the story by dialogue and Rabbit’s thoughts and observations and the little vignettes build on one another.  Those vignettes are easy to read through and not see the significance until later.

The King’s Own

The King’s Own picks up after Rabbit and company return to Freston, where the king has stopped on his progress through the kingdom, a trip meant to reassure and bind the kingdom together.

Unfortunately the remnants of the plotters from Covenants also come to Freston, only this time they bring a demon.

The King’s Own is a little harder to follow than Covenants, partly because Rabbit himself is puzzled by the apparently senseless actions.  It also further develops the relationship between Rabbit and King Jusson, and brings in several stand-alone characters that are interesting, Chadde the peace keeper, Ranulf and Beollan the Marcher lords, doyen Dyfrig.  The plot is great but the characters keep us interested!

Shadows Past

Shadows Past marks the point where Rabbit realizes how serious is his situation.  He has sworn to the throne of Iversterre and to King Jusson personally, and Jusson has made Rabbit his heir.  Up to now Rabbit has been too busy fighting rebellions and demons to realize exactly what that means.

The crux of the book is about 2/3 of the way through when Rabbit is tempted to just leave, to get to the harbor and take the first ship away.  He gets as far as a couple of steps when he realizes what he is doing:  denying his oaths, denying his magic, denying his friends.

Shadows Past doesn’t have the intense plot threats and conflicts of the first two (although there are still plenty of both), instead Rabbit must fight through to what and who he is, remaining true to himself while remaining true to his oaths and loyalties.

Summary

I enjoyed all three books immensely. Covenants is outstanding, one of the very best fantasy books I’ve ever read.  The other two are excellent, and I found that re-reading them this week that I enjoyed them more than before and would rank them right up with Covenants.

Borderlands is hands down my favorite fantasy series.  According to Lorna Freeman’s page on Amazon, she intends to write a fourth book, The Reckoning Flames, but it apparently has not made it out to print.

Borderlands reminds me of the Ivory Series by Doris Egan.  There are many similarities:  one-and-done series that are enormously popular, well-written with engaging characters and settings, with authors that seemed to come out of nowhere.  I keep hoping we’ll see more books featuring Rabbit, Laurel and the rest.

Second Book Doldrums – All That Lives Must Die: Book Two of the Mortal Coils Series, Eric Nylund

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Have you noticed that the second book in a series is often weak? I read Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund and enjoyed it enough to purchase the second book, All That Lives Must Die: Book Two of the Mortal Coils Series.

The premise is interesting, with enough twists to make the book readable and enjoyable and it includes most of the same characters.  Even so, All That Lives Must Die felt flat.  Book 1 was quirky, with oddball characters like Uncle Henry (aka Hermes), Grandmother’s strange rules, plus the ongoing sibling fights and vocabulary insults with Fiona and Eliot.  It was a fun read.

Book 2 still has a little but Uncle Henry is almost invisible, the Rules are undone and even Eliot and Fiona’s rivalry feels old.  Author Eric Nylund may have done the stale feeling on purpose, as it fits Eliot’s and Fiona’s moods and fears, but it didn’t make us readers feel anything except uneasy and a bit bored.

The premise of All That Lives Must Die is great.  Eliot and Fiona are going to a most unusual high school, Paxington University, where duels are common, where gym class consists of defying death while causing mayhem to the opposing teams, where the one class is about myths.  The students are from the Immortals, Infernals and long-time magical families.  Only about half will graduate and the remainder may fail due to being dead.

The school scenes are the best in the book.  I kept wanting to shake Fiona and Eliot and yell, “Are you insane?”, but of course that’s kind of hard to do with a novel.  The other students range from vicious to vacuous with a skew towards nasty and mean.  Kind of like everyone’s high school, right?  Except the death and injury here are real.

The weakest part of the novel is Eliot’s decision to follow his supposed lady love into hell, despite her continual rejection, despite him knowing it is Hell, as in real, true, infernal depths.  Before this we see him annoyed that no one recognizes him as Fiona’s equal, as a Hero, and he spends several boring pages sulking.  I gave up trying to tell him to stop being stupid!

The weakness is compounded by Fiona deciding to help him help his elusive girlfriend, in her case made even dumber because she sees her father as also in the mix.  (It is pretty clear that neither sibling ever learned Good from Evil as they continued to see choices in the present moment sprinkled with wishful thinking and ignored future consequences.)

Overall All That Lives Must Die: Book Two of the Mortal Coils Series is fairly good, a solid 3 star fantasy.  It simply isn’t as good, as enjoyable as the first novel in the series which was a solid 5.  The best part is high school, seeing Fiona and Eliot (mostly Fiona) deal with the murderous students and faculty and the weakest is Eliot and his gonadal-driven heroics.

By the way, this is not a book for kids.

 

For Two Nights Only – Tom Holt – This Defines Snarky

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If the dictionary of slang needs to define “Snarky” they only need to point to this book, For Two Nights Only, an omnibus containing Overtime and Grailblazers.  I needed a book to take to the beach and this one has gathered dust ever since I bought it 8 years ago and couldn’t get past page 5, so it volunteered to be my read for the day.

This time I managed to finish both novels.  In fact I got mostly through Overtime that afternoon and enjoyed enough that I finished it later that week and read Grailblazers a couple weeks later.  These stories are reasonably funny but I don’t recommend a steady diet of them.  It’s entertainment that makes you feel a little crawly afterwards.

At one time I loved Tom Holt’s books, especially Who’s Afraid of Beowulf, but got tired of the endless feeling of sitting on a mountain watching the idiots go by while making smug little pokes and jabs.  Holt’s novels will not help you develop the virtues of kindness and charity.

The plots are convoluted with characters coming and going (sometimes simultaneously).  I read once that P. G. Wodehouse used to chart his plots out on big poster-sized papers all over the walls.  I wonder how Tom Holt does his since they get a bit tangled.

Overtime

Overtime is screwy.  We start off with Guy Goodlet, RAF pilot during WW2 losing fuel and altitude over France, but quickly bring in the main character, John De Nesle, who is really Blondel, the troubadour who found King Richard the Lion Hearted by singing under every castle in Europe.  Except this Blondel is under contract to the nefarious financiers at 32A Beaumont Street who have figured snazzy ways to avoid tax by shifting money between centuries.

The book gets confusing after this.  The Beaumont Street folks and Blondel are at odds and Blondel isn’t crazy about the endless concerts and wants to get on with finding King Richard.  He has managed to build a castle with a door that can access any era (or no era at all which is dangerous) and is alternately ducking from and running into the Beaumont Street team.

King Richard has been cooped up in a dank dark dungeon for the last 800 years or so but is almost done with his tunnel, needing only another 5 or 6 years to complete it (it takes time when you have to hide the excavated dirt and the only place to do so is in sacks woven from spider web (as noted, it’s complicated)) when his kind dungeon warden decides to move him to a better cell.  Meanwhile the Pope and Anti-Pope (same person, just separated by death and many centuries) are conspiring with the Beaumont Street gang to do something nefarious.

Needless to say we have lots of adventures and narrow escapes and eventually Blondel frees King Richard, Guy marries Blondel’s sister; we don’t know what happens to the Beaumont Street team or the Popes, but probably they make a fortune one more time.

This was entertaining but wacky and confusing.  If you read it just take it as it comes, ignore the nutty parts and confusing shifts in time, place, identity and motive, and enjoy it.  And remember, you do want to sell those Templar bonds for the 2nd Crusade in 1189, and not wait for 1190!

Grailblazers

Grailblazers started off lighthearted and funny but it quickly got all tangled up and sad and a bit pointless. It reminded me of the dreams you have that seem so real until you wake up and realize how disjointed and floppy they were.

The premise here is that the Knights of the Round Table who were charged to go find the Grail are still looking for it, just not very hard.  In fact they are more interested in delivering pizzas and in whose turn it is to drive the van.  The 32A Beaumont Street finance villains reappear except this time they are from Atlantis and are shysters.  (The 32A Beaumont Street people were on the up-and-up, at least in the sense that their clients kept their money and made more.  The Atlantis people sold securities in companies that magically went bankrupt the next hour.)

Besides the Knights and Atlantis crooks we have a dwarf, another dwarf in a cameo role, Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (albeit both under different names), Merlin (also under different names), Joseph of Arimathea (mostly under his own name) and assorted other villains, fools and ambling-about-the-side-of-the-road people.

I liked this book at first but it got sad as it got goofy and the ending was not at all happy.  The good guys and villains are not so easy to tell apart and we have Simon Magus showing up to magically wrap everything up with a bow.  Overall not one of Holt’s better novels.

Book Review: Charming by Elliott James, Urban Fantasy

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Charming (Pax Arcana) is a refreshing take on the fantasy theme of a secret society that protects the world from bugaboos, vampires, werewolves and things that are out to kill us.  The difference is that this secret society, the Knights Templar, isn’t trying to rid the world of dangerous supernatural predators; it is charged with keeping the rest of humanity oblivious to the creatures. The rule is called the Pax Arcana and it is a geas that compels the society to rid the bad guys that get too obvious, such as vampires that start serial killing young women in a rural town.  They are obsessive about maintaining secrecy – and the purity of their group.

The hero is John Charming.  By birth he is a member of the secret society, but he has one big problem.  A werewolf bit his mom when she was 9 months pregnant with John.  She died the first full moon but John was infected.  The society tolerated him until a few years before the story opens when apparently they decided he was too much at risk to turn wolf.  Now John watches his back while he lives in a small rural college town, tending bar under a different name.

World Building

Charming is Elliott James’s first novel and the first in the Pax Arcana series.  The book is set in our world, rural America, so the primary world building is the background for the Pax Arcana, the menagerie of supernatural folk, and making it clear that John Charming is not a supernatural cop nor a Harry Dresden type with plenty of magic power at his disposal.

James dis a great job laying out his world by showing it, with no long explanations.  John Charming narrates the book in the first person, so we see everything through his eyes, which must be a challenging way to describe a whole magic system.  I was impressed with how natural the flow was in the story.  The only part that was challenging to follow was the knights from whom John Charming is hiding; we learned little about how they operated or were organized.

Besides the usual vampires and werewolves we have Naga and Valkeries with other creatures suggested.  It was great to see that the vampires were sexy only if you liked corpse-dead looks and bad breath and that werewolves feel great pain when they transform and that Naga like heat but can burn if you work at it. These were refreshing, and even better, gave the book depth and authenticity.

Characters

Some fantasy novels are all action and setting and unpronouncable words with clip art characters who have zero personality. Charming delivers real people who suffer and feel and rejoice and fear.  Besides John Charming we have Sig, a Valkerie, Molly the Episcopal priest, Ted Cahill the snarky cop, Chauncey Choo, a pot smoking semi-normal guy who got into monster hunting doing his day job of professional exterminator, and Dvornik the Eastern European kresnik, similar to the Knights that John came from.

Let’s look at Choo.  A professional exterminator who got a few houses with more than mundane pests, he teamed up with Molly and Sig to hunt a vampire nest operating in John’s peaceful college town.  If you think about it, who better to see through the Pax Arcana illusion than a professional exterminator?  If you’re killing roaches and rats, focusing on removing icky critters, you will be less susceptible to the Pax Arcana illusion.  The novel is full of these innovative touches.

The villains are equally well done, from the nasty teen aged vampire Anne Marie working on developing a whole nest of vampires and vampire wannabes, to Ivan, to Dvornik and his nephews who played both sides.

Anne Marie has only a few lines but they are great:  “Do you know what it’s like being me?  I’m a damned corpse!  I can’t feel anything except cold, and I’m cold all the time.  Except when I’m drinking blood.”

Series Intro

Charming is the first in the series. Daring is book 2 followed by Fearless which is due out August 11.  This was a series with rich characters and back story and strong foundation for follow up novels.  I am off to reserve Daring now!