More Books than Time

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

Not a Vampire Story But Close!

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Just like the first novel by Tony Bertauski, The Socket Greeny Saga, The Drayton Chronicles reaches in, grabs your heart, and makes you care for the title character. Drayton is an immortal who feeds on the life essence of a dying person. He began as a savage creature, killing as he wished, but learned to be human and to care centuries ago. Now he thanks the people who give him their dying breath and he takes on their unfinished business.

The Drayton Chronicles is a collection of five novellas, each moving one after the other. There is a narrative break between each story, but there are references back and it would be best to read in sequence. The first novella, Drayton The Taker, is a good example. Drayton finds Blake Barnes freezing to death on Mt. Hood and takes his dying breath along with his aching need to apologize to his family. Drayton makes his way to South Carolina where he finds the family and resolves Blake’s true burning regret. He also finds the bully who is making Blake’s family miserable and resolves that problem too.

We are steadily drawn into Drayton by seeing him through the eyes and feelings of the people around him, those that he is helping to pay back the final breath he took from their loved one. One of Tony Bertauski’s gifts is developing strong characters that you care about. With The Drayton Chronicles we seldom venture into Drayton’s minds but see inside the minds of those he is with. With The Socket Greeny Saga, also by Bertauski, we see the main character, Socket, through his own thoughts. Both are powerful, but I found Drayton even more compelling and with more interesting, fully drawn side characters.

The plot was reasonably good as was the setting. The novellas had varied locations and intricate layers of trouble that Drayton had to work his way through before finding the true nugget at the heart of the misery and anguish he came to solve. I found the first novella, Drayton The Taker the best, with Swift the Current and Numbers creepy. Bearing the Cross and Yellow were compelling.

This is not a long novel as all five novellas together are only about 260 pages and is a fast read. I got mine through the author’s generosity as he offered anyone who signed up for his newsletter their choice of a free E book from him. Thank you, Mr. Bertauski for your offer and for the beautifully done characters and story.

Real? Or Imitation Human?

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Too often to review a book I have to get it back open, just to look up the title. Not so with The Socket Greeny Saga by author Tony Bertauski. Mr. Bertauski told me Socket Greeny was his first fiction work, and it is excellent. I have him noted as an author to follow.

The main character is seventeen but this is not YA fiction.  Bertauski grabs your heart and does not let go.  You care about Socket Greeny.  Socket finds everything and loses it:  his family, his place in the world, his friends, his identity.  At the end you still wonder what happened and what will happen next.  The book ends but the story does not, yet there is no cliff hanger, no obvious sequel.  Instead the ending brings the loose threads together and leaves us Socket.

The Socket Greeny Saga is a trilogy that flows seamlessly from one book to the next. In fact my Nook version had no separation between the books, other than a periodic “Discovery” or “Training” or “Legend” interspersed in the text there was no way to know which book was which.

The plot is interesting, especially the first book of the trilogy, Discovery. Socket Greeny and his two friends Chute and Streeter go into Virtualmode during study hall and get into trouble. Socket inadvertently triggered a time slip that causes his Mom to pick him up from school and take him to the secret training facility for the Paladins. Paladins are humans with improved abilities, especially mental abilities, who are sworn to protect humanity.

In Books one and two Socket has to come to terms with his new abilities, learn and grow and develop mental powers.  Socket’s recurring enemies, duplicated humans that look and act just like real people, attack.  Socket is able to stop the duplicates, first with his friends and then by himself.

Book three starts with Socket, now a full Paladin, taking a wormhole trip to a remote outpost. Somehow he is kidnapped on the return trip and attacked by the real, ravenous enemy that the Paladins know nothing about.
Now Socket realizes that not only must he save the Earth and all his friends and family, he must save the universe.

The book could have gotten a bit ridiculous at this point. A seventeen year old universe saver? A ravenous enemy that kills all worlds? That can come to live with one cell? Instead the book turns inward, where we see Socket’s emotional depth when he realizes he has been betrayed and nothing is what he believed.

I loved the characters, especially Socket and the grimmets. Tony Bertauski did what too-few authors do when writing YA science fiction, and explored the inner depths of people and how they reacted to the events and threats. The story was well written, interesting and fast moving. It seems authors tend to skimp on plot or character or setting or good dialogue and writing style, but The Socket Greeny Saga had all four.

Just a few minor complaints.
The ending was ambiguous. What happens next? Socket is awake now, does he stay awake? Does he drift off again?
What about the grimmets? Did they die at the end? Or did they, and their world, survive?
Why did Socket stay sane and human when others just like him did not?
The hallucinogenic sequences during the testing and training were a bit much.

But overall, this was excellent. Tony has a generous offer in the end of the Nook version to request any free E book from him. After reading The Socket Greeny Saga you can bet I quickly took him up on his offer!

Wizards, Warriors and Zombies in the Minnesota Woods

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Wizard Dawning (The Battle Wizard Saga, No. 1) was a good book for one of those tired Sunday evenings when you don’t want to invest a lot of brain power in a novel. It is a wizard and warrior story featuring a seventeen year old Sig, his great grandfather Thor, mother Meredith and assorted bad guys and bit characters. There is a some coming-of-age actions (naturally given our teen aged hero) but there isn’t a lot of angst and misery or girl chasing.

Overall this was a pleasant, easy to enjoy book.  The characters were a bit flat but the dialogue was OK and the plot was fun and fast paced.  I don’t normally care much for wizard and warrior novels nor martial arts or dressage.  Author C. M. Lance used the martial arts and dressage as background, more setting and back story than as critical elements.  We did not have tedious explanations of “how things worked” either, which so often drags down a good story.

On the down side, I read this on my Nook.  The editor used poor rules for dividing words at the end of lines; for example, aren’t was often divided so one line ended with aren and the ‘t began the next line.  This was disconcerting.  (A pet peeve of mine is the fantasy writer who insists on using apostrophes for everything!  At least we were spared that.)

Another fun element was siting this story in a small town in Minnesota.  C. M. Lance didn’t belabor the location, but used it with a deft touch, incorporating the farm lands, hills, lakes, ice as backdrop.  It’s always a nice change when fantasies are not set in Central Park or California.  I enjoyed the way Lance used zombies, as story fodder, vs. making them a central element.

As indicated by the title, Wizard Dawning (The Battle Wizard Saga, No. 1) is meant to launch a series. The book had a logical beginning, middle and end, but there clearly is more story to come as Sig leaves for college and his mom is starting to learn about magic from an economist/gypsy.   We also need to find out how Sig will regain his own magic.

Wizard Dawning was the author’s first book and quite likely future ones will have richer characterizations. This first novel suffered from slightly wooden characters but was livened by an intriguing back story, well-done setting and fun plot.  To the positive Lance did not fill it with steamy romance scenes, explicit violence, boring martial arts or swear words!

Overall I recommend it if you want a fun story that doesn’t require a ton of deep thinking.

Red Rising – Social Threats Played Out in a School Game

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I almost gave up on Red Rising (The Red Rising Trilogy) after about 30 pages or so. It seemed stale, just another future with brutal overlords and a rigged brutal life for the underclass. The book started to pick up a little, then it kept getting better. By the time hero Darrow was leading his Mars house the plot was moving and the characters were more complete.

A few words of warning. Red Rising is violent. People get killed. Most of the murders are not described in graphic detail but there is enough that you will get sick of it.

Plot and Background

The society Darrow lives in goes to extremes to maintain its vitality with the same families and castes on top. One method is the Board of Quality Control selects only a fraction of the highest caste Gold youth each year to attend the schools scattered around the solar system. And of that fraction, half are murdered immediately and others will die. Youth who do not score high enough to go to the schools are relegated to powerless roles, the dilettante Pixies and looked-down-on Bronzes.

In theory only the students who graduate as Peerless Scared or Graduates can assume roles of power. Another method to ensure only the best survive is the school testing ground. Students are divided into Houses, each based on a Roman god, and must themselves sort out who leads each school, and which school will win over all the rest. The schools do not get the same resources. Mars has nothing except a tall castle, no food, no weapons, no way to start a fire. Ceres has ovens, walls, food. Minerva has horses and archery weapons. The Mars adult preceptor tells Darrow that Mars burns hot and burns out quickly. And indeed we see this. For a while I thought Red Rising was a Lord of the Flies reprise with the Mars house losing all cohesion, factions and internal fighting.

When the Mars preceptor shows the Mars students their house, he asks them how they can possibly win.  The answer?  Enslave the others.  Each house has a standard that will mark anyone from a rival house as a slave.  When I was reading this, my first thought was “get allies”, and I was surprised when the answer was “take slaves”.   Each house strives to get slaves, capture the standards from other houses, take over their resources.  Darrow makes a new path, with allies.

Backstory and Ideas

This  novels had one of the more intriguing social backdrops. Superficially we have a rigid society with severe caste restrictions (called Colors in Red Rising), with the bottom caste of Reds relegated to dangerous mining work far underground. The Reds believe they work to help terraform Mars, not knowing that the planet already is home to millions of people, with atmosphere, plants, animals, cities. The Reds are kept in artificial strife, with a rigged set of mining quotas and awards for the most production, given barely enough to eat. Girls marry at 14 and people are old at 35.

The problem with this is that it is not sustainable. Violence and fear can keep people in line for a long time but not forever. The minute Reds realize the lie, they will have no reason to obey other than fear.

The other threat to the Gold rule is internal. There are more types of power than military, commercial or political. What happens if a Pixie becomes socially dominant? Is there a Gold version of the society leaders?

Then there is good old fashioned nepotism. In fact, Darrow realizes that the school game is rigged to favor the son of the Mars governor. Given the social structure Red Rising sketches, the governor takes a huge risk. He promises favors and position to the twelve Preceptors – if his boy wins. If his son does win, all is good, no one will have reason to talk about it. If his son does not win, then what hold does the governor now hold? It’s too good a story, too juicy a gossip, too funny a joke with too many who know, not to whisper about. The author may have painted himself into a corner at the end when Darrow pledges himself to a man who is going down, we just don’t see it yet.

I’m curious how author Pierce Brown addresses these internal issues in the next book in what is planned to be a trilogy. If he spends time on Darrow and the plot elements of Darrow gaining power and position and eventually changing society, the story will be a good read. But if he uses the political and social flaws in his imagined world plus Darrow’s drive, we could have a winning combination.

I am not real fond of the dystopia genre and ever since Hunger Games became successful we’ve been inundated with them. Red Rising is several notches above and I recommend it.

Three Not to Finish – Two Mysteries One Fantasy

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Normally I give a novel at least a few pages before deciding it’s not for me. Two of these I read about half but the other fell off my lap after about 20 pages. All three of these books had great reviews on Amazon and Barnes and Noble but they just did not work for me.

Pies and Prejudice (A Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery) felt like a rerun. Heroine Ella Mae runs from her cheating husband back home to a small Georgia town and starts a pie shoppe. Of course her arch enemy from kindergarten on through high school shows up, her former crush shows up and she is suspected in a murder. With me so far?

Ella Mae makes pies to fit her mood and the person and bakes a bit of enchantment into each one. It’s a little like Garden Spells but without the charming eccentric characters and real-feeling fantasy element.

Despite Pies and Prejudice having 4 1/3 stars on Amazon I simply could not finish. Characters, setting, plot, dialogue were flat, uninteresting.

I got further with Mark of the Mage (The Scribes of Medeisia), over half way through. I was not particularly enjoying the story but it wasn’t so bad that it made me get up off the couch to read something else. At least not until my tea mug ran out and I needed a refill!

Mark of the Mage (The Scribes of Medeisia) isn’t a bad book, it just didn’t have enough oomph to keep me reading. This one also has 5 stars on Amazon so my blah feeling might have been me not the novel.

The second murder mystery, Leave No Stone Unturned (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 1), was the best of the lot, good enough that I could have finished had there not been something else to read. The story is a cute combination of suspense and romance, with late 40s widowed Lexie Starr concerned about her daughter’s new husband, Clay. Lexie doesn’t like the guy but is determined to put a happy face until she stumbles across a newspaper article that he is the prime suspect in his first wife’s murder. Lexie’s daughter doesn’t even know Clay had been married before.

Lexie makes up a story for her daughter about meeting up with a jeweler she met online and takes off for Schenectady to research the murder. This is where Leave No Stone Unturned lost me. Lexie tells the police detective she’s writing a novel about the case and that she could help. Really. No police detective who ever saw a single episode of Murder She Wrote or any of its imitators is going to be too excited about that and a clever woman like Lexie could surely come up with a better reason to talk to him.

The romance is sweet without being maudlin and is the best part of the story. It just was’t good enough to keep me reading the rest. Leave No Stone Unturned has 4 1/3 stars on Amazon too, so once again my opinion is the minority. I’d give it 3 stars.

Have You Ever Read a Book Where You Didn’t Like ANY of the Characters?

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Normally I have to like at least one character or else the book ends up in the did-not-finish pile. Somehow I got interested enough to actually finish Bear is Broken (Leo Maxwell Mystery) despite the fact every single character was an immoral sleaze.

The scary thing is the (Leo Maxwell Mystery) part of the title. Does this mean we get more books starring this clueless, inept, morally bereft lawyer wannabe? Can you tell I was not impressed with character Leo? Let’s see. He falls for a girl whom he thinks might have shot his brother, or who might be shielding her brother. He drinks and drives while drunk, smokes dope, stumbles around looking for clues, and lusts after his brother’s ex-wife. Definitely not someone you want to spend time with.

So why did I even finish it? Good question. In a way it was well written. Dialogue was good, characters were consistent (repugnant but consistently repugnant), setting well drawn.  On his Amazon page author Lachlan Smith, who is also a lawyer, says the realistic part of his book is “the drama of idealism colliding with the moral ambiguity of criminal law”.  Maybe that’s why the book is compelling.  The characters are nasty but we can also see hints there is far more going on than sex, booze, murder and drugs.  Those are just the setting and the real story is the way Leo must come to grips with the fact he is now an adult – always hard – and that there is no pure black and pure white in his chosen profession.

On the other hand the plot was overly complex with at least three murder cases all circling around each other and with clueless Leo in the middle. I never learned what the title meant nor do we have any idea how the characters will play out their next acts, other than they will be miserable. And so will I be if I spend any more time thinking about this sad novel. Well done as it is, I shan’t be looking for more about Leo.

Set Up for A Finale? Or More? Alliance: The Paladin Prophecy

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The Paladin Prophecy: Book 1 was a fun read that moved at breakneck speed and left a lot of questions and holes. (You can read my review here.)  I couldn’t wait for the library to get Alliance, book two so I bought it from Barnes and Noble. (Thank you Deidra for the gift card!)

Alliance moves fast too, and leaves us with even more holes and questions and it ends on a cliffhanger. Parts are just darn weird. For example, they explore a tunnel that is lined with big statues of American soldiers. Huh? Why would someone drag a humungous statue down there and how did they even move something that large?

And why did the Knights set up a lab about a mile underground? Which came first? The tunnels from the island mansion or the lab? And how did either one know to go towards the ruined non-human city?

Yes, I still enjoyed Alliance and yes, I’ll look for the third book when it comes out. But I’m a bit wary now.

Will this series deteriorate from a fast-paced, well-written story with enjoyable and realistic characters (and a big dose of oddness) into an on-going, never ending series about Will and friends vs. the Knights of Charlemagne? I hope not. I prefer books that have a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s fine to split the story up over multiple volumes but I don’t care for books structured like an endless television series.

Overall, this was good, with interesting people, intriguing settings and back story and a fast plot. I liked it, just am a bit leery whether it’s setting up to be a never-ending series.

MIB? Super Heroes? Kid Sensation Returns! Mutation by Kevin Hardman

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As the title says, Mutation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #2) is the second book after the initial Sensation: A Superhero Novel. Once more we join Jim, with his friends and fellow super hero trainees, but this time they are not saving the world. They are saving themselves.

In Mutation Jim is first recruited with an offer he can’t refuse from a murky government agency nicknamed MIB. Jim does refuse, which causes the agency, led by bad guy Mr. Gray, to target Jim and all the super heroes in training by way of a virus. The virus causes their special gifts to go haywire, either going into overdrive or essentially dying. And the kids are sick.

The threat from the MIB, the mercenaries they recruit and Mr. Gray’s determination to take Jim down are very real. Kevin Hardman does a good job setting up the situation and sketching the bad guys, with enough verisimilitude to make us feel Jim’s dilemma. How can he stop the MIB and their hench people, yet remain true to his ethical standards?

One of the opposition hench people is Estrella, whose super powers are star-like. Literally. Jim can barely keep ahead of her and realizes he needs to tap into her star nature to trigger her stellar evolution into a super nova. Mutation is full of these little gems, small snippets that move quickly yet let us feel the pressure and terror.

Mutation was enjoyable enough that I will look for the next one in the series, Infiltration. There were a few points that make me just a tiny bit concerned about the direction this series is taking.

  • Novel moved very quickly through multiple plot arcs and many characters.  The speed was essential to make the point that this is how Jim perceives the world, but a galloping plot could leave behind the characters and humor that I loved in the first book.
  • Like a lot of second books, this one had a sense of setting up, that Hardman moved the plot and characters and setting around to position for a series.  Nothing wrong with a series, but the books need to maintain the fun and character development, not deteriorate into a comic book.

As long as the author Kevin Hardman keeps the quality up the series will be a great deal of fun.  I look forward to more books about Jim, the Kid Sensation.

You can read my review of the first novel, Sensation, here:  So You Want to Be a Super Hero – Sensation by Kevin Hardman.

How to Keep the World From Going Sideways – Resonance by Chris Dolley

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After reading Medium Dead (reviewed here) I bought Resonance which appears to be Chris Dolley’s best known and most admired book. This book was more challenging to read.  It is also harder to review as it is hard to put my finger on what about this left me a little lukewarm.

For one thing I love good science fiction or fantasy, am intrigued by alternate worlds, prefer novels that are well-written with interesting characters and good dialogue. Resonance has all these. Yet it also had traits that I don’t usually enjoy: Obsessive/compulsive behavior in the main character, a character that matures far beyond what we have reason to expect, somewhat confusing setting and middling-good ending.

Overall Resonance is excellent. The writing quality is very good. We see the main character Graham through his own eyes and through his awareness of how others respond to him. Graham knows people think he’s weird, unsocial and probably retarded. What Graham knows is that it’s important for him to follow certain rituals in order to keep the world more or less in running order. Graham has it backwards, it is not the world that flops around but he. Graham moves among alternate worlds.

One interesting side note is how the villain sees the alternate worlds as a source of profit. He isn’t interested in moving goods and people, trading or exploiting, but in harvesting the combined experience of 2 billion worlds to develop breakthrough products. That’s a unique view and probably more realistic way to profit from alternate worlds, if they do exist and if we are ever able to talk to them.

Resonance felt incoherent to me at times. I think that was meant to be the case since Graham would experience the world as constantly changing, but it was unsettling and made it harder to read.

I do recommend Resonance, but be aware that it is unsettling to read and not as fun or as fast as Medium Dead.  Be sure you have several hours free and try to finish in a few days.
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So You Want to Be a Super Hero – Sensation by Kevin Hardman

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You see the title “Sensation: A Superhero Novel” and you think it’s another comic book, right? Actually no.

Sensation by Kevin Hardman is well done, readable, funny book about a kid born with a plethora of super powers in a world where super heroes are organized into teams, have an academy and training camp for young would-be heroes. I remember as a kid wanting to fly – and then wondering, what on earth would you wear to fly? Why pick a cape and tights? It’s cold way up there!  I never did figure the whole costume thing out and never learned to fly either.

Sensation by Kevin Hardman actually covers this important point. Kid Sensation, aka Jim, mentions his special-made clothes. And covers the need to not go to super speed indoors (to avoid carpet damage) and points out that you really need telescopic vision if you’re going to have super speed (since otherwise you’ll run into things).

The whole book is like that. Funny, with an engaging character, classic villains, realistic (once you accept the notion of super heroes) dialogue and plot trails. Jim has a few moments of growing up, finding his place in the world, but this is not a classic coming of age novel, nor is it a sketchy comic. Jim’s super powers are on the fantastic side, but they work the way you would think they should, if you spend any time thinking vs. enjoying.

This is a complete novel that stands on its own. Of course it sets Jim up to have many further adventures and includes a wealth of other characters we can get to know, but it’s written to be a full story on its own, not just the first book of a trilogy (why do all fantasy authors write trilogies anyway?) nor the first in a series.

The book I read recently that comes the closest to this is The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp by Rick Yancey reviewed here. A big difference though is that Sensation is not a kids’ book or YA fiction either. The main character is a teenage boy, but it is aimed at a broad audience that enjoys fast action, plenty of fun, and interesting characters.

Sensation is a fast read. I think it took me under two hours to finish, but I was laughing and eagerly looking for the next page all the way.

I highly recommend this if you are in the mood for something completely un-serious and fun.