More Books than Time

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

Vesta Exiled: Vesta Colony Book One by Sterling R. Walker – Science Fiction

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Vesta Exiled: Vesta Colony Book One by Sterling R. Walker takes us to the space colony Vesta, where some of the third and now their children display new mental talents.  The people affected, called Strays, had their DNA modified when treated as infants for a deadly plague.

Earth cut off the colony when they reported the plague, and now the 12,000 or so people on Vesta must develop their own way to survive and thrive in a world with threatening animals and incredible storms.  We would expect the colony would value people who communicate telepathically now that the communication devices have worn out, but such is not the case.  Some fear or despise the Strays, and the leader of this faction decides it’s time to intern all Strays in a separate prison.

This is the backdrop for the human story of five young adults, 4 Strays and 1 Normal, who find out about the plot and decide to fight back.  The novel is pleasantly matter-of-fact about the reaction of most Normals:  Most think it wrong or silly to intern the Strays but enough go along with it that the corrupt mayor is able to imprison almost everyone.  The Strays themselves cooperate after the mayor shoots one Stray with Downs Syndrome.

Sterling Walker gives us a story about people, with enough detail in the setting that we can appreciate the struggle the colony has now and will have even more in the future.  The colony is at a crisis point and I can foresee three broad paths:  1)  Treat the Strays as low caste workers, slaves, 2) Abandon the segregation effort and live together as they have until now or 3) Strays leave and form their own community which would eventually conflict with the rest.

Walker tells the story through the five young adults, yet I wouldn’t consider this a YA novel.  The author fleshes out events and people are realistic about feelings and each other and the romance is understated.  Overall Vesta Exiled is an excellent story, well presented with engaging characters and realistic conflicts.

Vesta Exiled ends on a cliffhanger.

4 Stars

Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series – Great Fun by Terry Mancour

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Like all Mancour’s Spellmonger novels, Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series by Terry Mancour  is entertaining, engaging, lots of fun with a fast moving plot, complex villains and earnest heroes.  This time we join journeymen Tyndal and Rondal who decide to pursue their knightly quest to rid the world of the Rat Brotherhood thieves, extortionists, slavers, kidnappers, murderers, etc., etc., etc.  The Rats aren’t too keen on being done away with and are highly decentralized, making it difficult to do more than annoy them with any one assault.

Of course Tyndal and Rondal find a way, along with helping Alshar’s Orphan Duke Anguin, make lots of money and yes, kill a dragon.  The book ends with us once more reintroduced to the real villains in the Spellmonger’s world, the fanatical followers of Sheol and Korbol, the undead, necromantic folk who hate humans.

The two young knights are interesting characters who feel somewhat real – albeit a little too good to be true at surviving impossible odds – and we meet a couple new characters, noble sibling shadowmages Atopol and Gatina.  Gatina adds a sour note to the story.  She is 14 and looking for a husband.  Per her family’s rules she must find someone as perfect and as daring as possible and she settles on Rondal.  Rondal isn’t too sure he wants to be settled on and finds Gatina’s remorseless hunt a bit unsettling, but like most teenage boys he’s also not going to look too askew at a pretty girl.

Even allowing for the medieval backdrop of the story I found it jarring to read about a 14 year old seriously contemplating marriage.  Today we call someone like that jail bait and her father would have more than a warning!  I found her too obsessive to be real, plus far too good at sneaking around and stealing stuff and predict she will cause problems in the future for the Spellmonger gang, much like Isily.

Mancour creates an unusual world with plenty of magic, good guys and villains, political intrigue and interpersonal problems.  The world in Shadowmage was slightly less detailed and the action a little harder to follow.  Mancour includes maps but they are hard to read in the E format and I wasn’t able to ground myself in the territory.  His characters jump all over the place, which adds speed to their actions and to the plot – and avoids describing endless marches – and that jumping actually made it a little easier.  I just didn’t worry about where the different towns were.

I was wondering how well I’d recall the characters and plot of the prior novels because it’s been a couple of years.  It’s a tribute to Mancour’s vivid world and people that I had very little problem keeping people straight.  The novel runs in parallel with books seven and eight.

Spellmonger Minalan plays a small role in Shadowmage, which I missed.  He is by far my favorite character in the series, resourceful, smart, not overly greedy or too ambitious and wary as heck of the Castalan spy queen!  I hope he has a larger part in book 10.

Overall the story is very good.  The medieval-style drawings of cats and rats and nobles and dragons are charming and add a piquant note.  I enlarged each one to take a good look.  Unfortunately the copy editor needs to learn something about homonyms, spelling, grammar, copy/pasting.  The Amazon credits mention the editor, but all I can say is the book must have been a muddy mess originally if it is still this bad after editing.  Some of the other Spellmonger novels are so poorly edited they are hard to follow; Shadowmage is not that bad although a few places we readers have to assume the author simply forgot words “not” or “no”.

Shadowmage was one of the 500+ books I lost (along with the first eight Spellmonger novels) when I sold my business.  I was glad to use my Kindle Unlimited account to borrow instead of buy this time.

4 Stars

Locking Up Our Own – James Forman, Jr., Crime and Punishment in Black America

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Author James Forman, Jr., has written a fascinating book, Locking Up Our Own, describing the path we took to today’s situation where a very large number – 25% in some age cohorts – of black men are incarcerated.  He shows how many black leaders in the past pushed for strong justice, by supporting the war on drugs, for example, leading us step-by-step to the present.

We see drug use as a problem of crime, not as a health issue.  Forman asks how we might be better off if the first call were to a therapist/job program/rehab program rather than to the police.  This is an excellent question; yet Forman does not absolve the misbehaving individual of his own personal responsibility.  Forman’s point is that harsh prison sentences and lack of alternative punishments have a terrible effect on people, especially young people.  He asks whether alternative approaches might work better.

Forman makes some excellent points about racial disparate treatment, some chicken-and-egg problems.  Forman points out that poor and minority people are more likely to be hassled by police, which has been shown in several studies (although not more likely to be killed despite rhetoric to the contrary) and surely those communities behave differently towards police as a result, which causes the police to be tougher in response.

The author seemed surprised that black police were at least as hard as their white fellows when dealing with black suspects.  The officers are doing their duty, to their honor, and cannot turn a blind eye because of the suspect’s race.  Forman didn’t seem to think that they should take it easier on black people, but was nonetheless bemused that they are not.

The title itself – “Locking Up Own” – bothers me as it implies that there are “Us” and “Them” and that “we” should not be so tough on “Us”.  Forman comments that drug use rates are fairly constant among races and that the reason white folks don’t get arrested is because they can patronize safer venues to purchase.  It would be interesting to see whether that holds true if you look at poor neighborhoods in general.  For example, do poorer white folks and poorer black folks patronize the same dealers?  Are they both equally likely to get arrested or hassled by police?  In other words, is there something about a person’s race, or more likely, the person’s general attitudes, skills, background, experiences that make one more or less likely to offend and more or less likely to be arrested?

The book offers a few suggestions:

  • Decriminalizing some drug use.  Forman doesn’t advocate making drugs completely legal, but treating some violations as misdemeanors, especially related to marijuana.
  • Give addicts more than one or two chances to get clean and stay clean.
  • Offer mercy.  He ends the book on an eloquent story about a young mugger who had never been in trouble before.  Forman visited the victim and asked him to request mercy and for the young man to go to a job program.  The victim kindly agreed and the young mugger has stayed out of trouble.
  • Placing young offenders in job programs.
  • Thinking through the consequences, with an eye to racial imbalances.
  • Employers to not immediately fire someone on probationary status for an arrest.

One of the last sections covers some of the semi-deceptive pretexts that police use to search vehicles, such as claiming the windows are too dark, then using those searches to find a gun or small packets of marijuana.  The driver should not have had the drug in the first place, but the deception and trickery used is a problem.  The racial imbalance comes because the pretextual search program described in Washington D.C. deliberately excluded a city section that was low crime.  Unfortunately one could blame the the search program as racist when in fact it was designed to be efficient.

Forman did not mention any of the problems that growing up without a father are known to exacerbate, nor did he talk about how to change behaviors so fewer people use drugs, sell drugs, get into fights, join gangs, hang around on street corners.  He referenced an “all of the above” type of general solution, including jobs, welfare, health care, without looking at the problems that even these well-meaning solutions can bring.

Overall Locking Up Our Own is well-written and the author uses anecdotes from his public defender career and historical research to make his point.  It is not polemic or shrill, doesn’t deny the need for policing, doesn’t sugar coat the violence.  It is easy to read and thought provoking without being academic, in fact I read it on the beach on vacation.

4 Stars

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg – New Twist on Fantasy Magic

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I borrowed the first book in Charlie Holmberg’s Paper Magician YA fantasy series, The Paper Magician, from the library and found it surprisingly good.  About the only concession to YA is the book is short and a very fast read that could have been more developed.

After main character Ceomy used her scholarship to magic school to cram two years into one and graduate top of her class.  She expected to choose the element she would bond with – paper, metal, plastic, glass, rubber – but instead was assigned to paper, the least favored, unpopular substance.  Once she bonds with paper she can never reach her dream be a Smelter, bonded to metal.

The magic system is intriguing and I hope author Holmberg explores it more in future novels.  Basically paper magicians can do anything that paper can do.  For example, if one folds a basic fan then one can use that fan to create a massive windstorm. Or one can read anything written on paper and produce illusions that illustrate the story.

I got all sorts of ideas from this second notion, especially once Ceomy found that not everything she produced was an illusion; at least one was real and lasting.  Could one print a story about housework, read it and get the dishes done by magic?   Or build a house by reading about it?  Or win a war by writing about collapsing the enemy’s walls?

Ceomy herself was a far better character than I expected.  She makes the most of her opportunities, even when thrust into the least glamorous magic world.  She is resourceful, determined, smart, loyal.  When a dark magician attacks her mentor Thane, Ceomy risks everything to save him.  She learns as much paper magic as she can and, more important, learns how to think of new paper spells, new uses for paper.

The Paper Magician is set in a London around the early 1900s, with automobiles and carriages, trains but no planes.  Holmberg doesn’t elaborate the setting more than needed, creating a small problem that those unfamiliar with London may not be familiar with the locations she uses.

Ceomy’s magic school oversees her apprentice years; while she is assigned to a single magician she is still bound by the rules and Thane grades her on performance.  I found this part interesting and the school structure adds some ease to the plot; it gives Thane legitimate reasons to test Ceomy and stretch her skills.

Overall The Paper Magician is a most enjoyable book.  I would prefer a more complex novel that develops the magic system more intensely and a plot that has more layers.  The characters are well done and the dialogue and interactions feel real.

4 Stars

Marked – Book 9 in Alex Verus Series by Benedict Jacka – Magic in London

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Adventure writers can go two ways with their series:  They can either entangle their hero in a series of adventures, loosely linked but not necessarily sequential, or the hero can adventure while striving towards a goal.  Wizard series tend towards the second, where the hero perhaps gets himself in a mess in an early story, then works to resolve the knotty problem in books 2-N.  Think of Harry Dresden or Simon & Montague or Harry Potter or the Iron Druid.  Or Alex Verus in Benedict Jacka’s excellent series.

Marked, book 9 in Jacka’s series, starts with Alex seated (rather precariously) on the junior council of Light Mages in Britain.  In the first two books Alex is refreshingly honest, with simple goals:  Stay alive and keep his friends healthy and alive.  Sadly for him, Alex apprenticed to a Dark Mage before leaving in revulsion.  Also he is a very skilled diviner and lots of people want to use him.  Other people want to use him to get to the Dark Mage leadership – a place Alex vehemently rejects and fled for his life to avoid a few books ago in Burned.  Now he is trapped as the aide to the one Dark Mage with a seat on the Council.  His boss is in mage jail so Alex temporarily holds the seat.

Marked picks up with the same grim feeling we saw first in Burned, then Bound.  Alex has too many enemies and is too well known to simply slide off into obscurity.  He lost that choice a few books back when he tried to throw his lot in with the Light Mages.  Now Alex believes his only hope is to get so powerful that no one wants to go after him and he can choose what he does.  This opens the story up for many plot threads but we lost the charming young mage we met in the first few books.

Jacka brings a few new twists to the story.  Earlier Alex implied that young mages didn’t have a lot of choice.  They could apprentice with a Light or a Dark, they could attend the Light apprentice program, or they could remain adepts who are at everyone’s mercy.  This time Alex muses that the declared Light and Dark mages are a fraction of the total; he says the majority are neutral, independents.  It isn’t clear how one becomes (or stays) independent, and we’re left to wonder whether Alex could have lost the target on his back if he had not made waves, had been independent.  Apparently it is too late for that and Alex will move forward.

Characters

As you can see from the discussion about Alex’s choices, Jacka makes his characters into real people that we care about.  We identify with and root for Alex as he threads between morality and survival.  I’m not sure I’d have made the same choice he did, but I care that he did make it and want him to succeed.  (Of course, if your primary goal is survival then eventually you will lose.)

Alex is a thinker who is growing into a deadly doer; in fact he isn’t always thinking as well as he should.  He goes to ask the dragon under Arachne’s home some questions but doesn’t seem to absorb what he learns.  (Typical of dragon foretelling, the answers are cryptic to useless.)

Alex has matured considerably in the nine books.  He’s gained and lost friends, gained power, gained cynicism and gained too many enemies.  He always has good reason for what he does but it doesn’t always work and other people end up holding the bag – and holding a grudge against Alex.

Marked spends as much time on Anne as on Alex.  Anne is both the hero and the villain; Alex relies on her, saves her; she saves him.  Anne is enigmatic and it will be interesting to see how her character develops.

Anne wants to be a mage and live a normal life, to have a family, friends.  She got abducted and trained to kill as a teen and from that experience developed all sorts of deadly skills.  She shoved the immoral parts of her personality into a fortress, walled it off and threw away the key because she didn’t want to kill.  Alex encounters this non-Anne a few times and so far Anne is unwilling to integrate her two sides.  That may be book 10.

Back Story

The Light Mage council and its adherents are a typical bunch of academics/middle managers/PTA bosses.  They like to play games about dominance and face and will bicker and debate endlessly before taking action.  And when they do take action they aren’t too concerned about things like other people or truth or morality.  Yet Jacka made this believable – in fact it’s more believable than the benevolent, altruistic Council that some books about wizards and magic have.  People are people whether mages or not, and that’s how people act.

These mage leaders, both light and dark, seem motivated by power and greed for more power.  The revelation that the council is actually a minority of mages makes this more believable.  Most people do not dedicate their lives to power.  In Marked we see that is true for most mages too.

Even so, the endless threats that Alex faces seem a bit over the top.  He doesn’t seem to know how to gain a power base of people, aside from his friends, and is the obvious scapegoat for everything that goes wrong.  I hope he learns to expand his definition of “power” to include influence based on wisdom, credibility, helpfulness and not just raw magical power.

Overall

Jacka writes well and Marked has good dialogue, interesting, likable characters.  Marked has more action and a little less reflection than prior novels in the series, that combined with Alex’s declared intention to amass as much power as possible to ensure he and his friends survive makes the story a little less appealing than the prior novels.  I like Alex but I liked him a little more when he was the earnest want-to-do-good guy.  He still wants to do good and he still does good but he’s harder edged now, not as pleasant a chap.

My rating here would be 4+ or just under 5.  Marked is solid, excellent story and characters, but I don’t feel like it is quite a 5 star novel.

My thanks to the publishers who provided an advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wizard Undercover – Rogue Agent Book 4 Fantasy by K. E. Mills

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Wizard Undercover is the latest novel in K. E. Mills’ excellent fantasy series, Rogue Agent, about wizard Gerald Dunwoody, and his friends Reg the bird, Monk Markam, Emerabiblia (Bibie) Markam and Melissande.  In the first three novels, The Accidental Sorcerer, Witches Incorporated and Wizard Squared, Gerald changes from semi-talented to very powerful and very unpredictable, a rogue wizard, conscripted into his country’s service.

Gerald’s boss, Sir Alec in this world’s version of the CIA/NSA/etc., sees potential in having a very powerful wizard chock full of unorthodox spells, and prevents Gerald from removing the dark magic he consumed in the prior novels.  This leaves Gerald on his own, terrified of the grimoire spells, desperate to control himself, to not follow his alter ego in a parallel universe who reveled in evil and killed anyone who got in his way.

Wizard Undercover picks up right after book three ends, with Gerald heartsick at what happened and frightened of hia magic.  He grieves for Reg – his Reg – wants to get to know the new Reg, wants to love Bibbie but fears he will hurt her.

The main conflict in the novel is Gerald’s internal struggle.  Can he control his magic, can he use it without contaminating himself?  Can he and Bibbie find each other?   The external conflicts set the backdrop and secondary action:  Can Gerald prevent an international disaster and can Princess Melisande and Bibbie jump into the heretofore all male world of international espionage.  Author Mills deftly braids all three plots into a solid novel.

Wizard Undercover is not as compelling a read as the earlier three books in the series.  Good as the story is, interesting as the characters are, I find my attention drifting, reading 50-100 pages at a time.  The espionage backdrop is the weakest part of the story and Wizard Undercover needs a strong plot to hold all the emotional tensions.  In the prior novels Gerald and friends fought for their lives; the threat in Wizard Undercover is more diffuse, impersonal for most of the story.  I think the interpersonal tensions work best with a stronger plot and existential threat.

Author K. E. Mills has written a good book, one I recommend.  Like the other novels in the Rogue Agents series Wizard Undercover has a true ending, no cliff hangers.  Read the books in sequence because the characters continue and the plots reference previous events.  I look forward to a fifth book with Gerald, Reg and the rest.

4+ Stars

Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World by Mitch Prinstein

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Did you ever wonder why some people seem to have it made, to always have a wide circle of friends, to be able to say things that people listen to?  While others struggle just to be seen?  Mitch Prinstein brings research findings on how people act, how they talk about others, how their brains work, to this topic and uses anecdotes to share his findings.  Popular is easy to read, accessible to us non-specialists, and full of interesting – and helpful – information.

Prinstein divides “popularity” into two types, one is basically status and the other is likability.  He points out that the status type tends to make people miserable over the long haul as people either burn out from being treated as objects or seek foolish aims.  Think about anyone you might know who was high-status in middle or high school but who ended up not very successful as an adult.  Or celebrities who both lust after fame then despise how it works in practice.

Prinstein sees likability as very important and worthwhile.  He shows how most likable people genuinely care about others, are kind, follow the rules, help people in groups and one-on-one.  As he puts it, the most likable people actually live in a different world than most of us, a world where things tend to go very, very well.

He talked some about people who are the opposite of likable, those who are disliked.  These people tend to be bad at picking up social cues or don’t respond to others in ways that are comfortable to be around.  He points out that most of the little gaffes are truly tiny, but add up to a personality that others avoid.

One item I found especially fascinating is how disliked people react .  Most bring some level of aggression while others tend to step back and fade out.  Some put their heads down and just work, but most get snarky or unpleasant, some backbite and gossip.  It was interesting to think back where some of these scenarios played out.  Of course it’s always easier to see things from the perspective of distance!

Prinstein has some advice for parents who want their children to be popular and for those of us who would like that for ourselves.  First, he cautions against seeking the status type of popularity.  It’s the type we all think of but it doesn’t do us much good and we tend to blur our thinking about status and likability too much .

Second, he suggests that parents give kids opportunities to play with others, that they help kids by playing with them, by talking through social situations, especially younger children.  Kids that are too shy or too aggressive are disadvantaged here but a wise parent can possibly help.

Also, while we tend to get a level of popularity/likability as children that stays with us for our lifetime, we can adjust our behaviors to increase our likability.  There’s a risk here that someone can try too hard, become unauthentic, but all of us can strive to be kinder, more thoughtful, pay attention when others talk, not interrupt.  It is possible to make ourselves at least somewhat more liked by our actions.

Popular is a fascinating book on an interesting subject, well-written and easy to follow.  Author Prinstein avoids being preachy or too prescriptive and makes his point by illustrating it with his research subjects.  Overall excellent.

4+ Stars

Emissary – Strong Fantasy, Romance and Coming of Age by Thomas Locke

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The main character in Emissary is Hyam, just turned 21, who honor’s his mother’s last request to visit the Long Hall, home of wizards, home of his father, and his despised home for five years as a young teen.  The Mistress of the Hall tells Hyam very disturbing facts and hints about his ancestry.

The novel could have taken several paths, pure fantasy with quests and wars, coming of age as Hyam learns about himself, quasi-medieval romance adventure.  Author Thomas Locke did an excellent job at merging all of these into a novel with plenty of magic and fantasy elements that centers on a young man who must put aside his frustrations at wanting to know who and what he is in order that he can protect his land and people from sorcery.

This theme of self-sacrifice recurs throughout the novel in subtle ways.  Hyam’s wife puts aside her worries to present him with a serene and happy face while he recovers from a magical attack.  The current Oberon lord puts aside his claim to the throne in order to prevent war, then retires to a small fortress and lets his name slide into obscurity.  The wizard master Trace gives up his leader role to follow Hyam.  The elves and Ashanta give up their seclusion to aid the people fighting the sorcerers.

This undercurrent of sacrifice and adult decisions makes Emissary a serious novel, an excellent, enjoyable story  about magic, yearning, romance, and war, meant for adults.

4+ Stars

 

Stranger Magics by Ash Fitzsimmons – Not Quite Midsummer Nights Dream!

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Ash Fitzsimmons took the bare bones of The Midsummer Nights Dream and wrote a full novel with plenty of action and developed characters, some humor and yes, even some mistaken identities in Stranger Magics.

Quick Synopsis

Colin LeFee owns a bookstore in Rigby on the Atlantic coast, lives quietly except when helping Father Paul exorcise faeries who are having too much fun in our world.  (Some Fae get their jollies tormenting humans, others like to rape or just be obnoxious.)  The story opens with Colin kicking one of Oberon’s court out of town.  When Colin returns home he finds his neighbor Mrs. Cooper bringing a 16 year old girl to him.  The girl is terrified (and defiant, like most frightened people), denies she belongs in Rigby, wants to go home.  Colin investigates and discovers the girl is Olive, long lost daughter of his old flame Meggy, and a changeling, whom Titania kicked out.

You see, Titania is the queen of faerie, powerful, nasty and Colin’s Mommy Dearest.  Colin’s dad died about 700 years ago and was human, making Colin half fae.

Along the way we meet Oberon, several wizards both good and semi-good, Robin Goodfellow, Mab, a seminarian and the best character of all, Mrs. Cooper.

Characters

Fitzsimmons did a great job building Colin’s character.  He could have made Colin too good to be true, or a man tormented by his dual nature, but instead he took the harder path to make Colin a real person, someone who cares about others and about whom we care.  As Colin mentions, full-blooded fae cannot love and most don’t try; we can blame his human parent for the fact that Colin can care, does care about people in general and individuals in particular.  Colin takes his role as protector seriously; he protects us humans from other fae and if needed, from worse.

Colin suffers; he is smart, witty, perceptive.  He is also stupid.  Somehow he thought that spending a night with Meggy 16 years ago and leaving the next day was the honorable thing to do; Meggy of course did not share his opinion.

Olive was the least developed character.  She is a typical petulant teen, except now she is a faerie exile marooned here with a mom she denies, constrained from some magics, alone and hating every moment and person in her new American life.

Several of the other characters are well developed, Meggy, Slim/Rick the bartender/wizard artisan, Joey the seminarian, Toula the wizard, and my favorite, Mrs. Cooper.  Mrs. Cooper starts as your basic busybody old lady neighbor, yet somehow knows to bring Olive over to Colin (and who would bring a 16 year old girl to a 20-something guy for help instead of calling 911?), who calmly accepts the fae infestation and helps Colin defeat the attacking faeries by hitting them with her stainless steel teakettle.  She doesn’t say much and what she does say is tinged with kindness and humor. Fitzsimmons made excellent use of a could-have-been prototypical character for the story.

Overall

The writing style is good.  I enjoyed the flashbacks as Colin fills us in on his 700+ years in the human world and explains his antipathy to Titania.  I wasn’t real sure I liked the ending with Colin in his new role, but given the alternatives he faces and the fact that he literally has no good option that would not cause greater woes for himself and all of us humans, it makes sense.

I hope the author, who bills herself as an “unrepentant car singer” writes more, either with the same world or explores new territories.  I will certainly purchase more from her.

4 Stars

No Time Like the Past: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Five – Breakneck Pace

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Wow.  No Time Like the Past has plot, plot and plot.  Our fearless Max does:

  • Travels back to St. Mary’s during the Cromwell revolt, saves 3 people and discovers why Markham sees a ghost;
  • Rescues people from the fire at St. Paul’s cathedral and nearly ends up dead;
  • Organizes Open Day with plenty of excitement and nearly ends up dead;
  • Re-structures the entire training program and enjoys the kind Mrs. Shaw as her temporary PA;
  • Travels back to rescue Botticelli paintings and nearly ends up dead
  • Witnesses the Spartans holding off the Persians at Thermopylae and gets wet on by one of the Spartans
  • Makes her first ever serious emotional commitment (and does not end up dead).

In addition we have the usual explosions and faux pas and near-catastrophes.

No Time Like the Past is fun to read and reread, and I guarantee each time you read it you’ll find something new to laugh at.  Author Jodi Taylor has a gift for vivid descriptions that make us feel like we are perched above the Spartans holding the Hot Gates, feeling the terror of a cathedral exploding in flames.  She brings the vivid imagery to life with wit and wry observations that make us feel like we are inside Max’s head.  The novel is successful at making history come alive.

There is character development in the sense that we get to know Peterson and Markham and Helen Foster better.  It is as though these are acquaintances whom we now are traveling with, learning about, becoming friends.  None of the characters undergoes any Eureka moments or has major emotional growth, but that’s not the point.  Taylor makes us feel like we work at St. Mary’s and all these people are real colleagues and friends.

My only real complaint with No Time Like the Past is that it is very hard to recall all Max’s adventures and accurately assign them to the right novel.  Since the books move one to the next, and all at the speed of light, the whole great cacophony gets bundled up my mind and the individual novels blur.  It makes it hard to write reviews!

4 Stars

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