More Books than Time

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

The Bastard’s Refuge: Blood of Wrodor – Book One by Brian O’Rourke

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I’ve been cleaning out my Kindle library, reading some books that I’ve had for a couple of years, and came across The Bastard’s Refuge. I don’t recall exactly, but it was probably a BookBub special and I didn’t expect much, figured it would be yet another book that I read 10 pages of or so then delete. In fact The Bastard’s Refuge is excellent. Brian O’Rourke created a compelling world with tension, threats, intriguing back story and a far more interesting main character than many fantasy heroes.

Galeran lives at the Abbey of Bronze, a shelter for all high-born bastards, run by warrior monks. He is one day short of 18, and at 18 must either take monastic vows or leave. Noble families have a nasty habit of killing off bastards, either their own or their rivals, so leaving is risky, and it’s difficult since Galeran has no money and the abbey is remote. At the same time his country is under attack by invading Ra-Haizur, a force that includes over 100,000 warriors and skilled sorcerers.

One of those sorcerers is leading a force to capture the abbey and kill all the children and monks, thus eliminating all possible high-born children, even those born illegitimate. Galeran must take all the surviving children and escape to a forest.

And the book ends.

Yes, it ends. Galeran and a couple hundred kids are in a cavern making their way to safety when it ends. It speaks much for this author’s skill that I looked on Amazon to see the next book in the series, despite the horrible, cliffhanger ending. Unfortunately, although The Bastard’s Refuge is noted as Book One there does not seem to be a Book Two. If there were I would buy it.

4 Stars I’d give this a solid 5 stars for completely exceeding my (low) expectations and delivering a well-written fantasy had it not been for the ending.

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Polar Vortex – Suspense in the Bitter Cold by Matthew Mather

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After the first few pages of Polar Vortex I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep reading.  A passenger plane has crashed somewhere in the Arctic and the National Transportation Safety Board has nothing to go on.  No transponder signals, no broadcasts, no mayday, no locator transmissions.  “So a Boeing 777 with three hundred seventy-eight souls disappears over the North Pole and all we have is that?”  “That” is a journal handwritten by a passenger, Mitch Matthews.  I dreaded reading how Mitch and the rest ended up dead, lost in a sea of ice.

I did keep reading and got caught up with Mitch, his 5 year old daughter Lily, and the other passengers.  They survive the crash, but are in the Arctic with summer clothes, minimal food and water, no heat or power.  The cover shows Mitch and Lily looking at a blaze of color and light.  Did the passengers disappear into some fantasy or science fiction rip in space?  Did they all starve and freeze?  Somehow Mitch’s journal survives, did Mitch or Lily or anyone else make it?

Author Mather has created a compelling story of love, hardship, endurance, all while we readers believe most end up dead.  Somehow the story and the people reach in and grabbed me, kept me reading despite dreading the end.  The characters tell the story in how they act and how they work together to survive, how Mitch works to keep Lily and young boy Jang alive, how they eventually end the story.

There is a villain and there is a reason.  I guessed right on the reason and had no idea about the villain.  Mather made him credible to his victims and to us readers all the way through his novel.  Excellent job of developing a compelling, addictive story.

Pacing Problem

The writing is good, with a few pacing problems and some confusing motivations.  About 35% of the way through the book drags for a bit, as not much is happening and the passengers have not yet coalesced.  This slow spot doesn’t last long, and ends when we hit the next problem, the confusing section.

Less-Believable Plot Points

Some erstwhile rescuers reach the plane, give out warm survival suits, even child size ones to the two kids, and some food.  No one is quite sure about these newcomers as they claim to be Finnish marines, but the passengers know they aren’t anywhere near Finland and the others don’t seem to be speaking Finnish.  It doesn’t add up but everyone is exhausted, cold and hungry and isn’t about to look a gift rescue in the teeth.  At least not until the rescuers start shooting.  All the surviving passengers jump into one of the rescue Zodiac boats and leave.  That is the hinge point of the story and I didn’t buy it.

Granted no one is thinking clearly, even so, it’s hard to see why people starving in the middle of the Arctic would leave rescuers to hop in a tiny boat to seek their own way home.  The rescuers indeed seem untrustworthy and make everyone uneasy, but if they were simply going to kill everyone, then why not do it immediately, not feed and clothe them first.  In any case the passengers do agree on a path and proceed.

The other unbelievable point is that Mitch was able to use a pen to record his journal right to the end, in blinding snow and wind, in 50 below weather.

Summary

It is because the people are so compelling in their never-ending drive to survive the crash, to get home, to save the children that Polar Vortex will stay in my head for a long time.

4-5 Stars

The Final Touch – A Romance by Betty Neels – Marriage of Convenience

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Betty Neels wrote 134 romance novels, all perfectly clean, most featuring English nurses and rich Dutch doctors.  The Final Touch fits Neels’ classic mold:  Dutch resident doctor Cor entices Charity with sweet nothings when he is in England on a course, convincing her that he loves her so that she follows him to Holland where she takes a hospital  job and eventually realizes Cor is a nasty flirt, and has never been serious about her.  Rich Dutch consulting physician Tyco finds Charity crying in the hall and takes her out to supper.   He eventually proposes a marriage of convenience because his two young daughters need a mother.

I enjoyed The Final Touch because Charity is a fairly strong character, marrying Tyco because she likes him and his daughters, not quite realizing that she is beginning to love him.  Tyco also is more developed than some of Neels’ rich Dutch doctors, feeling vulnerable because he is older than Charity and fears she may still be attached to Cor.

Much as with any romance we readers can’t be too fussy about the plot.  Sometimes the conflicts in Neels’ stories are silly; lying old girl friends (or wanna-be girl friends), or foolish misunderstandings and often he or she jumps to conclusions and makes everyone miserable.

The Final Touch has two conflicts.  Neither Tyco nor Charity realizes they are falling in love and thus step ever so carefully around each other, worrying about the other’s feelings.  Also, Charity’s very beautiful model step sister decides to make a play for Tyco and Charity believes her lies.

Read The Final Touch – indeed, any of Betty Neels’ novels – for pleasure, to see two people fall in love and wade through a few challenges to have a happy life together.

The Flaw in All Magic by Ben Dobson, Magebreakers Book 1 Even Mages are Human

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Even mages are human.  And humans make mistakes.  That was the thesis for Tane Carver’s senior dissertation at the mage school (which got him expelled in disgrace) and it is the underpinning for his livelihood.  The flaw in all magic is the mage who casts it.

Lead character Tane Carver is very, very good at analyzing magic and spotting flaws but has no magical ability.  Tane scratches a modest (very modest) living examining spell diagrams for flaws and advising how to correct problems and gaps in wards.

The Flaw in All Magic opens with the dean of divination at the mage school asking Tane to consult on a murder that could not have happened.  One of Tane’s old friends is murdered in a locked lab, secured behind wards that prevent anyone unauthorized to enter.  So how did someone gain access and who is the murderer?

The Flaw in All Magic combines a bit of whodunit with interesting fantasy elements and fun characters.  Tane is a bit much sometimes, way too smart and not always truthful.  Of course, as the hero, he bends the truth to save the day.  Tane is irksome when he gets on his soapbox and author Dobson is good enough writer to keep these soliloquies to a minimum.

Author Dobson did not stint on creating even minor characters with personality.  Indree, Tane’s old girlfriend and now a leading light in the local police, is fairly predictable yet believable, as are the nasty villain and the university leaders.

The best character is Kadka, half orc and half human, an extremely rare type of individual.  She left her orc homeland because they saw her as human, and wandered the human countries for a while, finding they saw her as Orc.  Now she is in Audland Protectorate, the one country left from the breakup of the Mage Empire centuries before that encourages magic and welcomes folks of all species, from goblins and orcs to elves and sprites.  Kadka is in love with magic, seeing the wonder in what the mages do and the beauty in the magical workings.

Kadka has a fairly simple philosophy; if threaten anyone I care about then I will smash your throat in.  That is extremely useful when she teams up with Tane to solve the murder and along the way finds a threat to her adopted country and indeed to everyone.  Kudos to Dobson for writing such a novel blend of innocence, wonder and badassery.

The Flaw in All Magic is an enjoyable read, well written with complex backstory, good pacing and solid characters. The writing is good, with a few clumsy moments, as when Tane explains to Kadka how things work to bring us readers into the backstory.

I’ll most likely look for the sequels.

3+ to 4 Stars

Superhero Detective For Hire: Superhero Detective Series, Book One by Darius Brasher

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Superhero Detective For Hire is a fast, cute read with some pleasing character development and nifty backstory and plot.  Our hero detective Truman Lord appeared a few times in Darius Brasher’s other books Sentinels and Rogues, and I thought he was interesting enough to check out the full-length novel featuring his exploits.

Lord is a wise-cracking private detective who happens to be a superhero, able to do almost anything with water.  He hides behind his smart aleck ladies man persona while actually smart and persistent.   He makes fun of himself to himself, giving himself alliterative names such as Truman the Tenacious and asks random ladies whether they are dazzled by his good looks.

Truman Lord takes a case from a university president who is being blackmailed by her boy toy lover.  Oops.  The boy toy is a meta human too and can record anything from his perspective and put it to video.  This skill serves him well when it comes to getting ladies to pay up.  Lord takes the case and finds himself behind the eight ball with dead bodies piling up and a shortage of clues.  Needless to say he manages to solve the mystery.

Superhero Detective for Hire is a fast read, easy to follow as Brasher takes care to tell us where we are and why, who the other people are and why we should care.  For example, at the end we revisit a minor character we met earlier and Truman tells us just enough to jog our memory as to who this person is.

I liked Superhero Detective for Hire because it was funny and the super hero aspects were low key.  (I really do not want to slog through pages someone’s powers.)  Truman Lord doesn’t take himself or the whole superhero panoply seriously and the story is a lot of fun.

At the same time Brasher does a good job helping us get to know Truman.  He is far more than a jokesmith – albeit one with good taste in clothes – and I will enjoy his exploits in future stories in this series.

4 Stars

Trials: Omega Superhero Series Book 2 by Darius Brasher

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Darius Brasher’s Omega Superhero series started out well.  Caped introduces us to Theo and his friends and his world, one where meta humans can become licensed superheroes and fight bad guys, complete with cape, tights and mask.  I expected a fast plot with plenty of cliches and was happy to be surprised with a well-written novel peopled with characters and deepening stories.

Second novel, Trials, continues with Theo (aka Kinetic) taking the exhaustive and dangerous tests to earn his license.  Unfortunately for him someone is continuing their quest to kill him and isn’t too fussy about how they do it.  That murderous threat is one challenge; the others are from the nature of the trials themselves and the moral challenges of using one’s powers to help, not hurt, and friendship.

This series has been quite a find and I’m off to read the third book, Sentinels.

4 Stars

Bullets and Blades – A Montague & Strong Detective Novel Orlando Sanchez Book 7

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Orlando Sanchez started his Montague and Strong supernatural detective series with a bang, rattling off four  enjoyable novels in a row, each building on the strength of the characters Simon Strong, a normal human, and Tristan Montague, a mage plus assorted demi-gods, a hellhound, vampires, were-creatures and more.  Lots of fun to read, lots of action, plenty of character development, humor and a sense of danger.  The fifth novel was far less well-written due to some irritating new characters and Simon’s sudden descent into passive stupidity.  Book six was only slightly better and I wondered whether Sanchez had lost his magic touch.

Book 7, Bullets and Blades, is not quite up to the standards of books one through three, but still far better than book five.  True we still have LD and TK Tush – thankfully with minor roles – and too much “a miracle occurs here” type magic, but on the plus side Simon has his brain back.

Overall this is a big improvement, although I still used my Kindle Unlimited to borrow instead of buy.  It will take a few more top quality novels from Sanchez before I plunk down cold hard cash.

4 Stars

Caped: The Omega Superhero Book One – Contemporary Fantasy by Darius Brasher x

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Caped:  The Omega Superhero is surprisingly enjoyable.  Our hero, Theo, is dismayed to find he has the super powers, moreover, that he is an omega class, the most powerful.  Theo didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do in life – besides not be a farmer – but being a hero was definitely not his ideal career.

Events take over and Theo decides to embrace his abilities and learn as best he can to control them and take on the role of hero.  He is motivated first by revenge, but quickly discovers he has a new family with the other young heros-in-training.  Seeing Theo grow into a likable young man takes Caped from a typical adventure to a story with nuances of character, plot and back story plus a bit of humor to keep it lighthearted and a pleasant evening read.

Caped is the first in a series by author Darius Brasher and I intend to read Trials, the sequel.

4 Stars

Tarnished City by Vic James, Sequel to The Gilded Cage – Dystopian Magic in England

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Vic James’ taunt fantasy thriller, The Gilded Cage, introduced us to a horrifying alternate England, one where magic-wielding Skilled Equals tyrannize everyone else, even requiring all commoners to serve 10 years of Slave Days.  The slavery conditions vary, from miserable to deadly, and Equals have little or no consequences for injuring their slaves.  Once a commoner serves their 10 years as a slave they are more-or-less free, with however, no political power.  (Gilded Cage review is here.)

Tarnished City picks up immediately after The Gilded Cage.  Luke is Condemned, in the hands of Crovan, a psychopath Equal, highly skilled at inflicting torture via the mind.  Luke’s sister Abigail has escaped from the car that is bringing her and her parents to the slave town, and now makes her way to an Equal family she believes can help her prove Luke’s innocence and set him free.

Neither sibling realizes exactly how naive they are.  Only a few Equals care about commoners or are willing to take action even knowing someone is innocent of a crime.  As power-hungry Whittam Jardine says, “Stupid girl.  Truth isn’t what happened, it’s what people will believe happened.”

Tarnished City‘s plot is escapes, followed by searches for family, followed by desperate quests for fairness and justice, with a good-size helping of violence.  The story combines Luke and Abigail coming of age, realizing exactly what their country is and what they can – and cannot – do to save it.  Their counterpoint is the Jardine sons.  One grows into betrayal, one into on-again/off-again decency, and one is a sociopath, caring almost nothing about anything beyond his Skill.  One family is Slave and the other Equal and they are bound together.

Characters have a range of emotions and motives although a few of them remain opaque.  The villains are notably sketchy (after all, what author wants to delve into the mind of a psychopath like Crovan?)  Even Abi and Luke feel more like people in a book rather than real people.  Despite the somewhat-limited character building we can empathize enough to realize the incredible danger and no-win situations for the individuals and the overall country.

Overall Tarnished City is well-done.  It is difficult to read in large doses given the truly terrible and horrifying events and situations that Vic James develops.  On the downside there are a lot of characters and some are in-and-out, no one you have to remember.  The author tries to help us keep the point of view narrator clear by noting the person in the chapter titles, but it is still a little hard to recall a minor character from the first novel.

I just received an advance copy of the final novel, Bright Ruin, and am curious how James will end this.  There is no happy ending that I can see.

Please note that this series is marked YA because the protagonists are older teens but I certainly would not recommend this to anyone very young.  The concepts are blatantly moralistic and political, and while we hear the villains tell us why they think they are right, they don’t make a lot of sense.  Don’t give this to a young person who can’t distinguish motive from means from ends.

4 Stars

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik – Mystery, Terror, Magic in the Cold North

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Spinning Silver is not a sequel to Novik’s wonderful Uprooted.  The two novels have no characters, setting or magic in common, and, although Novik says both books are set in the same world, the stories and countries are far apart.  Spinning Silver is also not as good as Uprooted.

Spinning Silver gives us three heroines, and Miryem, daughter of an improvident, hapless Jewish moneylender, Irina, daughter of an ambitious duke and Magreta, the poor daughter of an selfish, cruel man has two brothers to protect.  The three ladies live in a country similar to Old Russia, where Jews are kept in their ghetto and in their place, always at risk for pograms and perfect scapegoats for a too-long winter.

Miryem realizes her father would rather let his family freeze and nearly starve than to demand repayment.  She takes over his job, demands her father’s debtors pay on their loans and discovers she has merchant talent and can turn silver into gold.  The Staryek king hears her boast that she can turn silver into gold and leaves a bit of silver on her doorstep.  Miryem is smart and takes the silver to her cousin’s suitor, a jeweler, who turns the silver into a bewitching ring that catches all eyes.  The jeweler sells the ring to Irina’s father.  Next the Staryek leaves a larger pile of silver, which Miryem and the suitor turn into a necklace.  The third time Miryem asks the Staryek king what he will give her in return; he will make her his queen – whether she wants it or not.

So far we have the outline of a Rumplestiltskin fairy tale, but the novel has far more depth than the tale.  The Staryek king terrifies Miryem, and she calls upon the backbone she found when demanding loan payments and stands up to him.  She forces him to see her as an individual instead of as a despised mortal.

Meanwhile, the demon-possessed tsar marries Irina because his demon wants to consume her.  The demon loans the tsar magic and in return, the tsar must provide the demon with victims.  The tsar is cursed with the demon because his mother bargained for her power in exchange for her infant son.  He doesn’t know how to rid himself of this unwanted monster and is terrified that his nobles will discover he is possessed and burn him as they did his mother.

Magreta comes into the tale because her drunken, worthless father owes Miryem’s family; since he cannot repay the loan Margreta works for Miryem’s family, eventually taking over some of Miryem’s collecting tasks.

All three ladies live in fear.  Miryem first fears her neighbors, then the Staryek king.  Irina fears her husband’s demon and knows that if the nobles kill him that they will kill her or imprison her in a convent.  Magreta fears her father and fears for her brothers.

The novel’s story is how all three overcome their fears by winning against terrible odds and tyrants.  This is the best part of the book.

The romances are weak.  Novik gives us reasons that the Staryek king will want and admire Miryem, but we don’t really see why Miryem would want to marry him.  Irina of course has no choice because she already is married to the tsar and we see hints that the two will be happy together, but there is no compelling love story here.  Neither the Staryek king nor the tsar are fascinating people, nothing like Sarkan, the dragon in Uprooted.  All the men feel like blank slates, only there for the girls to be strong against.

The other weak point is that the dangers feel muted, distant.  The characters tell us they are in danger and we can certainly see it, but the threats don’t feel as immediate as they should.  Even when Miryem fears her king will kill her for not completing a task the story focuses on her determination more than on the danger, and the same is true for Irina and Margreta.  All three girls either have or develop spines of steel and spend most of their emotional energy on remaining adamant.  I certainly appreciate that in a character – far better than moaning and groaning – the side effect is we lose the sense of deadly peril.

Overall the writing, pacing, world building are excellent.  I was a little disappointed because Spinning Silver is not as good as Uprooted, lacking its overall emotional punch.

4 Stars