More Books than Time

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

The Spanish Connection – Stereotyped Romance by Kay Thorpe

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I enjoy most Kay Thorpe romances but this one! The Spanish Connection combines all my most-disliked Harlequin Presents attributes.

  • Stereotyped characters. He’s Spanish, rich. He’s arrogant, thinks he’s God’s gift to women, bossy, obnoxious, uncaring. He files suit to take custody of his dead brother’s sons from their mother! That’s pretty low.
  • Our jerky hero is so colossally full of himself that he tells our heroine that men are always superior to women. Oh my, where to start with this one? Can we just take it as read that superiority depends on the individual and the particular area?
  • He declares he intends to “take” her and that it wouldn’t be rape because he is so gorgeous and sexy and and and. By this point, page 50 or so, I was gagging.
  • He expected all women to be docile doormats. (I worked with a lovely lady from Spain who was the furthest thing possible from doormat-hood.)
  • It’s nauseating to stereotype Spanish men the way this novel does.
  • She falls for him sexually right away and they sleep together the second night she’s in his home. Hey lady, get a grip!! He’s manipulative and obnoxious and out for his own agenda. And if you sleep with him you’ll be so confused he can lead you by the nose.

Plus the story itself is unconvincing. I just don’t buy the romance here. Nina is reflexively jealous of Rafael’s wanna-be girlfriend despite events; she simply sees Rafael with her and assumes they are sleeping together. That’s not love, that’s stupidity.

The plot is nuts, the characters don’t feel real. Even Kay Thorpe’s normal good writing can’t salvage this mess.

Feeling generous today.

2 Stars (I’d give it 1 Star except I did finish it and it is Kay Thorpe!)

I read this initially on Hoopla, which you may be able to access via your library. It’s also available in E format on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Harlequin.com. Look for paperback copies on these sites plus Thriftbooks.com and eBay. I got a paperback copy in a lot with several other books on eBay so it now clutters up my shelves.

The Christmas Eve Bride by Lynne Graham – Not Much There

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Doesn’t the title, The Christmas Eve Bride, sound like a romantic courtship, wedding and honeymoon? Instead this is a hurried little story about Amber, now working as a gardener for a rich couple who live near her married sister, and her former love Rocco. Amber was deeply in love with Rocco and mentioned to a former school friend that they were together; the school friend then embroidered this into a juicy tell-all tabloid scoop.

Rocco didn’t even give Amber a chance to explain, he dumped her and told her not to call him again or he’d file stalking charges. A week or so later Amber discovered she was pregnant, her employers fired her and she couldn’t get a job that paid enough to raise her baby. She eventually ended up working as a gardener on an estate near her sister because the job came with a small cottage. Our story opens with Rocco visiting the estate and spotting her, assumed she was there researching for another tell-all story. Various insults and kisses later Rocco asks her to move to London to be his mistress. He knows nothing about her baby but is exhilirated to discover they had a child and quickly falls back in love with Amber and they marry on Christmas Eve.

The basic problem here is the story and characters stay just that, not real people we can imagine being. There is no immediacy, no sense of empathy. I can imagine a man being glad to discover he has a child – but only after he gets over being flabbergasted, dismayed and angry. Yet author lets us think that Rocco is surprised, yes, but delighted.

Add to the weak characters to the silly plot and you have a book that is barely readable, certainly nothing worth spending a couple of hours on. So why did I read it? It was part of a bundle borrowed on Hoopla and it was a very fast read on New Year’s Eve.

I reserve 1 Star ratings for books I couldn’t finish, so let’s be generous,

2 Stars

The comic version of The Christmas Eve Bride standalone novel is available on Amazon; I didn’t find the bundle.

The Trusting Game by Penny Jordan

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Christa has turned the fabric business she inherited from her great aunt into a profitable design enterprise and she is a member of her local chamber of commerce where Daniel Geshard is speaking this month about his motivational course that trains people to trust their coworkers. Christa wants none of this; after all her best friend married a con artist, supposedly a motivational coach, and got taken to the cleaners, eventually to suicide.

After Daniel’s talk Christa stands up to ask him for his success metrics, can he prove that his course is effective? He can’t, instead challenges her to attend and see what she thinks afterwards. The other chamber members pressure her to accept and off we go to the Welsh mountains where Daniel will take her canoeing, mountain hiking and more, putting her in positions where she must trust and rely on someone else.

Daniel and Christa are instantly and deeply attracted, and given this is a Harlequin, end up as lovers. There are a few hitches, mostly around Christa’s unwillingness to trust Daniel, until Christa goes back home and Daniel overhears one of the chamber members taunting Christa that Daniel romanced her in order to get a successful outcome. Christa doesn’t believe this but Daniel thinks she does, etc., etc., etc. Typical romance where the two characters really don’t know each other well and are quick to take offense or to run off.

I’ve experience with business programs of the day, having gone through enough to know that while they often have merit, the quick and easy courses lack substance and the more difficult ones require long term commitment and usually fail because they do not result in change. It was easy for me to share Christa’s skepticism!

Even though I appreciated Christa’s point of view, she became whiny and obsessed with being too frightened to believe that Daniel had anything more in mind than a quick seduction and course success. That made the story tedious and hard to see why Daniel bothered with her.

The Trusting Game is one of the semi-smutty Harlequins, where the plot and story revolve around instant physical attraction. Will they sleep together? How and when? I’ve read a couple other Penny Jordan romances that have a bit more story, more developed and more likable characters. This one was mediocre.

2 Stars

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Dial G for Gravity (The Brent Bolster Mysteries Book 1) by Michael Campling

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Dial G for Gravity by Michael Campling, subtitled The Brent Bolster Mysteries Book 1, has great sounding plot and back story, but the writing and characterization don’t live up to the promise.  Let’s go to the good part first.

The plot idea is terrific:  Aliens are here peacefully.  The  Gloabons are die-hard bureaucrats (apparently the national mania) as well as die-hard anal probers.  It’s a little suspect whether they really are peaceful because their technology has pretty well wiped out ours and now we’re pretty dependent on them.  Plus there is yet another alien group with a taste for live humans – for supper.  There is plenty of serious stuff going on in the background.

The execution against this backdrop disappointed me.  The characters are mediocre, with hero Brent, a Galactic Investigator PI, a meld of all the PI tropes you’ve ever read.  The best character is the alien Rawlgeeb, a bureaucrat through and through, but good-hearted once the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.  He is the first clue that the supposedly benign Gloabons may be anything but; he greatly fears for his life when he makes a mistake abducting Brent for “sampling”, aka Probing.  Apparently Gloabons that make too many mistakes end up dead or exiled to nasty places.

The writing is supposed to be humorous, and had it been the book would have been more enjoyable.  A lot of other readers apparently liked this much more than I as several Amazon reviewers found the book funny and the characters well done.

The book had a great cover and this nifty of a plot background that kept me reading, thinking it would get better.  Unfortunately Dial G for Gravity never lived up to its premise.

2 Stars

Earth Warden by Tony James Slater – Great Blurb, Boring Book

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Earth Warden: A Sci Fi Adventure, book 1 of The Ancient Guardians series by Tony James Slater should be excellent.  The plot has everything one could want in a science fiction story:  suspense, intrigue, a fascinating universe and back story.  Unfortunately the writing is flat, making the novel more of a chore than a delight to read.

The characters also should capture our interest and liking.  Young Tristan lives alone in Bristol, supporting himself by small time thieving after his father disappears.  He is more-or-less kidnapped by Kreon, a mysterious Warden, and taken off into interstellar space to become Kreon’s apprentice.  Along the way we have lots of battles and characters that show up and then fade away, and hints of overwhelming danger to Earth.

Tristan simply does not act the way any normal older teen would when confronted with a galactic civilization – comprised of humans biologically identical to us Earth folks – and off hand comments about Wardens and danger and existential threats and eons of unknown history.  He never once asks how come everyone he meets is a human?  Why is Earth protected?  Why do the Wardens exist and what are they warding?  Never.  Not one peep of intelligent questioning.

The story and the characters never came to life.  I forced myself to slog through on the vague chance that the book would improve, or that the author would show flashes of skill that might make subsequent novels worth reading.  No.  In fact the only reason I’m giving this 2 stars and not 1 is that I did in fact finish reading.

2 Stars

Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson; Unsuccessful Parody with Puns

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I had such high hope for Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson.  Hearne wrote the Iron Druid fantasy series and the recent A Plague of Giants (reviewed here) and this new novel is promoted as a “hilarious sendup of Chosen One narratives” full of “puns, flipped tropes”, cheese and a sassy goat.  Sounds like it’s going to be super funny good, or else really really bad.  Sadly it’s not good.

The novel starts out with a map full of strange place names – Retchedde, Sullenne, Muffincrumb and Gobbleneck – which got me interested right away.  I love fantasy books that need maps.  The map was the best part.  The pixie with one blue sock shoots her arrow of Chosen-Oneness to our supposed hero, the Farm Boy.  Farm Boy decides he needs to rescue the princess in her rose brier infested castle, and Gus, the talking goat, decides to come too.  So far it’s a bit stupid, but OK.

The novel follows the traditional quest narrative, where the fearless band of strangers coalesces into a group of friends, all working together to, to, to what?  Don’t know.  A couple of the band go to the witch to find a cure for the now-dead Farm Boy, the evil wizard visits the witch to steal her magic, the goat just wants to avoid the curry pot and the hunts lady is going because why not.

Evil wizard can make bread; his hunts lady is a prime klutz; the bard looks more like a rabbit than a girl and the warrior maiden doesn’t much like wearing chain mail bikinis.  These types of silly points need a light touch to make them funny and keep the book rolling along, but the authors keep beating the same points over and over.  How many jokes about cold chain mail bikinis can you listen to?  And how many times can you read about the talking goat and his pellets?  Or the budding romance between warrior maiden and rabbit-maiden-bard?  Or the incredibly clumsy and not real smart hunts lady?

The whole novel is like this.  A couple of the merry band die and the rest just keep going; in fact after the first one dies from poison mislabeled there isn’t even a pause.  He dies, they go.  The problem is that if you are parodying a quest then there must be some actual quest elements.

Kill the Farm Boy was obnoxious with stupid innuendo and jokes that appeal to 13 year old boys.  The parody didn’t work well because everything was a parody; the quest was no quest, the wizard is no wizard, the evil witch is not evil, the nastiness in the mines of Moiria (oh sorry, the Catacombs of Yore) is all illusion.

Kill the Farm Boy tries to be funny but it’s too pretentious and too asinine to make it work.

2 Stars

I received this for free in expectation of an honest review.

Flicker, Ember in Space Book One by Rebecca Rode – Boring Science Fiction About a Clairvoyant Gypsy

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Rebecca Rode’s Flicker, Ember in Space Book One, features Ember, a Roma or Gypsy, one of the very few folks left on Earth after a mass migration a few centuries before.  Now the Earth is a tiny part of an empire that spans many star systems, ruled by the absolute Emperor whose will is enforced by ruthless military force.  Ember supports her father and herself by telling fortunes in the marketplace to tourists until ruthless General Kane kidnaps her for her clairvoyant skill.

The book is boring.  I read about 50% of the way through and skimmed the rest, hoping it would improve, but it doesn’t.  Ember should be a sympathetic character but I didn’t care one way or the other.  General Kane is odious, bloodthirsty, cruel, ambitious.  The author describes two societies, the Roma on Earth and the militarized world that Ember must face, and neither is appealing or admirable.  Basically there was nothing in the novel to engage one and make the reader feel part of the story.

2 Stars

Mini Reviews – Science Fiction Books from So-So to Really Bad

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Remnants of Hope by Antoine Henderson, Science Fiction, Space Pirates

Remnants of Hope< is a freebie from an author launching his new novel, Rogue Star.  Remnants of Hope uses the same characters.

The main problem with this novel is the characters are lifeless.  We have the noble smuggler Taran, his friend?/lover?/second-in-command? former/current assassin Nadal-Ti, fearful alien technical genius Blurb and faithful android/ship’s computer Delta-811.  We never learn much about Nadal-Ti and the others are stock characters.

Plot uses a pirate attack, indigenous people whom Delta-811 can somehow understand, a strange and never-described star system with lots of planets and cut off from all other star systems.  The story never really comes together.

The writing is not bad but it’s also not very good.  I read it on vacation while dodging cold rain so managed to finish.  I will not look for further stories by this author.

3 Stars

Star Cat Origins by Andrew Mackay, Prequel Freebie for the Star Cat Series

Star Cat is a cute, clean longer novella that author Andrew Mackay gives away to introduce us readers to his Star Cat Feline Space Opera.  It is cute and sweet, with a five year old Jamie and his cat.  Jamie’s dad dies at the beginning and his mom is heartbroken; Jamie is too young to fully appreciate death but he’s not happy either.

The space program is desperate to find a way to respond to an unknown signal from Saturn, which may be a distress call, and notice that cats seem to respond to the message.  Jamie sees the ad asking cat owners to enter their cats in the Cat Trials, which is in Book 2, Star Cat: Infinity Claws

Star Cat is well-written but not for me.  If I were pre teen I’d probably like it.

3 Stars

Lunacy on Omega Station: A Pulp Superhero Space Opera (The Shattered Cosmos Book 0) by Chucho Jones


This is bad.  Really bad.  Ridiculous plot, ridiculous characters, poor writing, boring.

1 Star

Waning Chance (The School of Ancestral Guidance Saga) Book 1.5 by Thorn Osgood


In all fairness I did not read the first book in this series nor did I finish this one.  It was written OK, just didn’t seem to go anywhere and was depressing to boot.  I was curious about the Ancestral Guidance stuff and the portals but not enough to keep reading when my books-to-read pile grows ever larger.

2 Stars

Star Warrior (Star Warrior Quadrilogy Book 1) by Isaac Hooke

Star Warrior starts well but I had to quit about half through.  We have Tane, a farm boy who gets semi-kidnapped/semi-rescued by two people with unusual mental powers…  Wait.  This is familiar!

Author Hooke brings in some unique twists.  He imagines a parallel but opposite universe that has all of our stuff but no people.  We can visit there, remove things, take them back to our universe, use them, and not affect them here.  The problem is the folks who live in this opposite universe attack on sight and some of them are equally advanced as the farm boy’s world.  Interesting concepts.

I took this on vacation and simply lost interest.  First hero Tane acts dumber and dumber and more annoying by the moment.  I wanted to smack him upside the head and tell him to grow up!  The skill level nonsense is annoying too.  Apparently in Tane’s world one can purchase nanite injections to get new abilities or to augment existing abilities.  Tane is able to get injections that increase his dexterity and coordination, nice, huh?  Skill levels got boring about the third time, obnoxious by the seventh!

2 Stars

A Different Kind by Lauryn April

A Different Kind has an unusual lead character, Payton Carlson, head cheerleader, prom queen, the in girl, at least until the little grey men abduct her.  Payton rekindles an old friendship with the loner kid across the street, Logan, and discovers the Grey’s interest in her is not benign.

I got about half through A Different Kind and may go back and finish this one.  It is quite well written and author April develops Payton from a typical bratty popular kid into someone with more depth and character that I almost cared about.  It just didn’t quite tug my interest long enough.  Perhaps it’s a better read for a cozy winter evening.

 

Mini Reviews – Fantasy Books from So-So to Really Bad

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Scattered Seasons (The Season Avatars Book 2) by Sandra Ulbrich Almazan

Author Almazan tries to combine Regency-style romance with fantasy in Scattered Seasons, similar to Patricia Wrede in her Mairelon the Magician but doesn’t quite work.  Gwen is a noblewoman, betrothed to neighbor William (whose mother fits all the mother-in-law stereotypes) and also the Avatar of Spring in waiting.  She is infected by a cursed pottery shard that renders her unable to remember how to use her healing magic.

The characters are not too bad but the plot is far thinner than it needs to be.  Their ancient enemy is attacking the four season avatars in hopes of disabling their sponsoring “gods”.  In the bulk of the novel Gwen chases from one end of the country to the other to find her other three co-avatars in waiting, all while dodging her disapproving fiance and family; the actual action is at the end.

I ended up skimming the book, curious whether anyone was ever going to do something or we were just running around.  (I have had quite enough novels that waste hundreds of pages tromping from place to place.)  Also there was no map and the book had only hints of the enmity and world building.

The Afterword mentioned that book 1 in the series used the same characters as young people.

2-3 Stars

Death by Advertising by J. R. Kruz, Interesting Short Story that Just…Ends

Death by Advertising could have been, should have been good.  Tess’s longtime friend and business partner Judy is supposedly dead.  She announced it with a beautiful ad for the funeral home, an ad that had the funeral attendees sign up for their final packages in droves.  Judy was a marketing genius who worked with artificial intelligence to design unbelievably effective ads – as witness her funeral home copy.

Supposedly Judy has been cremated and her ashes scattered, but the doctor who signed the death certificate died the year before and the whole thing makes no sense.  Unless, of course, Judy is alive.  Or the AI cooked the whole thing up.

I was drawn in and curious what was going on.  Instead of getting more information, author J. R. Kruz simply ends the book.  Instead of an interesting novella we have a truncated short story that left me feeling gypped.

2 Stars because it has so much promise, 1 Star for the ending.

One Way Ticket by Alia Hess, Freebie Novella for the Travelers Series

One Way Ticket isn’t bad but it isn’t very good.  Protagonist Sasha is a ne’er-do-well who just lost the grandmother that he loved and who kept him more or less straightened out.  Sasha finds an website that claims to be able offer a semi-effective vaccine against North American Hemorrhagic Fever, the disease that killed 99% of the people in North America and is still deadly years later.

Sasha decides to go, even though he must leave the cat he loves, everything and everyone he knows, and despite knowing the vaccine has some unpredictable bad side effects or partial effectiveness.  It was interesting to watch a young man decide to take a huge leap into the unknown, away from the heavy government surveillance, drinking, scummy friends.

I might try reading one of the longer books in the Traveler Series as One Way Ticket has promise.  Author Alia Hess gives this away to entice readers to her longer novels and mentions the second book, Chromeheart, reintroduces Sasha.

3 Stars

Showdown (Wyrd West Chronicles Book 1) by Diane Morrison, “Weird West” Fantasy/Western/Cattlepunk Novelette

The author tries something new, combining post apocalyptic story with westerns with fantasy, and it’s interesting enough to read but not enough that I want to read any more.

Kudos to the author for making her setting feel real, a cross between the OK Corral and hell spawn attacks in a barren, dry Canada sometime after a Cataclysm destroyed our civilization and unleashed magic and evil galore.  She embeds her otherwise stock characters (think Luke Skywalker as the sherrif out to stop the evil gunman) with some feeling, making them a notch above cardboard.

I just don’t like the story or premise or characters and won’t read any more in what is now a series of six novellas.  Writing is decent,using flashbacks to show us the young boy and setting.

2 Stars

Spinning Time Preview by D. F. Jones  Teenagers, Lust, Jealousy, Didn’t Get to the Time Travel Part

I received a preview of Spinning Time via Instafreebies and won’t be buying the full novel.  It is billed as time travel but the preview showed a bunch of teenagers drinking and partying.  Rich Julia decides to date the local weirdo Phillip and her former boyfriend decides he is jealous and picks a fight.

The Amazon blurb for the full novel mentions Julia gets tossed 70 years into the future and must find a way back to Phillip.  Sorry, no.

1 Star

Winter Wren by Miranda Honfleur, Blade and Rose Short Story

Winter Wren is a short story designed to introduce us to Miranda Honfleur’s Blade and Rose series.  The story was pretty good although the ending and some of the character interactions were unappetizing.  I may buy the full novel, Blade and Rose, although it sounds a little melodramatic in the Amazon blurb:  “A kingdom in turmoil or the love of her life. Which one will she save?”

Edgehill (The Kingdom of Shadows Book 1) by Thomas Rouxville.

The cover on Edgehill is great.  The novel is really, really bad.  Our heroine Athena learns she is a Guardian of the Kingdom.  The kingdom is threatened by shadow that its king has invited in and all the men are called to the army.

Sadly, we never learn what a Guardian is.  Is Athena supposed to have magic?  Wisdom and diplomacy beyond her years?  What does a Guardian do?  74 Pages and we never ever get to this rather crucial point.

Of course the ladies left in town have no idea whatsoever how to act with their husbands gone; they are unable to run a farm or a mill or bakery or shop.  Not to worry, Athena will show them!  Not at all clear how ladies who stood beside their husbands for years would not have learned pretty much everything the man did, nor how an 18 year old girl will be able to teach anything.

I finished this only because I was sure we’d finally learn just what is going on with the Guardian business, but nope, no answers here.  Luckily it was a freebie.

1 Star

The Enemy of an Enemy (Lost Tales of Power #1) by Vincent Trigili, Science Fantasy Fiction

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I like science fiction and I like fantasy and The Enemy of an Enemy combines the two.  Should be good, yes?  Unfortunately the book is very uneven, with a few good spots and a lot of mediocre story telling.  The story suffers from some complacent “of course everyone will agree” thinking and far too many “a miracle happens here” events.

For example, lead character Vydor is the intelligence officer on an enormous military space ship in an empire that prizes obedience and mindless order-following.  Vydor is able to convince the ship captain and later the emperor to allow him to form a separate country, made up of seven people who have mental powers.  The first fifth of the book sets the stage for an empire that does not embrace creativity or independence, then the middle section has Vydor able to get every concession he wants with almost no effort or conflict.

It was as though we are all driving on the interstate to Florida when suddenly we are in a plane landing in Denver and everyone is just fine with the change.

The “miracle happens” events are all through the story.  Vydor and his team of 6 others gets a box of books on magic and are instantly able to learn and apply the skills listed.  In fact each individual is able to study one discipline, then effortless share with the others so everyone learns seven times as fast.  The group of seven then defeat the strongest sorcerers who have spent eons learning their trade.

Overall The Enemy of an Enemy is entertaining but silly.  I finished it but won’t read more in the series.

2 Stars