More Books than Time

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

Kind of Cute, Kind of Short, Kind of Pompous The Frog Prince Fairy Tale Retelling

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The Frog Prince (Faerie Tale Collection) sounded so good. A retelling of the fairy tale “The Frog Prince”, this story by Jenni James had a fun twist on the story of the prince spellbound into a frog. Our hero, Prince Nolan, has been engaged to Princess Blythe since both were infants, but he’s pretty sure she’s a rather nasty piece of work. To find out he has himself turned into a frog (talking of course) and transported to Princess Blythe’s favorite pond in her mother’s castle grounds.

Princess Blythe meanwhile has despaired of ever being loved or finding someone to love. Nolan’s stilted letters show him as a conceited, obnoxious bore and she’s not interested in marrying such a man. Of course she and Nolan-the-frog end up having a great time together and fall in love.

The plot idea is cute, the story nice and short so why is this just a so-so read? Maybe it’s the 10 pages of pontificating at the end, or Blythe’s too-perfect nature or her oft-repeated desire to have someone “see her”. I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but I found the first 30 minutes OK and the last 10 tedious. Yes, that’s right. This is well under an hour read. And by the time I finished, I was glad not to have wasted any more than 40 minutes.

The Frog Prince has a 4.5 rating on Amazon with almost all the reviews complimenting the humor, plot and characters. It is not listed as a YA fantasy, but would appeal to romantic minded teens.  It didn’t work for me.

Yes, It’s Light, But Not Silly and Not for Kids – Medium Dead, Chris Dolley

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I was in the mood for something funny, not too serious and found Medium Dead. This book was one of those “if you like A then try…” on my Nook. It sounded cute so I got the free sample, read it and immediately bought the full story. Just what I was looking for: fun, interesting characters, underlying mystery and a serious back story, fast plot and great dialogue.

Heroine Brenda has been vegetating since finding her best friend with her husband four – count ’em, four – years ago. Since then she’s watched soap operas, gotten an undemanding job with great hours, lives alone three hours from Mom and older sister Susan, and, oh yes, sees ghosts. She meets a new ghost one morning who warns her to leave NOW or risk her life. Sure enough, in comes a serial murderer-rapist along with his car jacking victim, ineffectual Brian.

Only catch is that Brian is hard to kill. He absorbs bullets, even loses his head, and still keeps after the bad guy. Brenda doesn’t know what’s going on but she gladly helps, improvising right along with Brian. After Brian tells Brenda that he is a Vigilante Demon, here to fight crime. Fun ensues.

A few minor quibbles. I can’t fathom why anyone would claim to be a demon although Brian invents a demon call center staffed by Sanjay for some of the funniest dialogue. The plot has loose ends.  If Brian and Brenda stay crime-fighting partners and see Mom and Susan again, I’m not sure how Brian will morph from sexy Fabio the model, doctor and fireman to Brian. And at the end we see Brian is not a demon, just a semi-normal guy with a passion to put the creeps away.

Overall the plot is pure fun, the characters interesting, dialogue witty without a bit of meanness. Brenda and Brian feel like real people – ghosts and shape changing aside – and interact with other real people. The villain is well done and creepy, and at the end we see enough of the other creeps to know there’s plenty of room for a sequel should Dolley choose.

Medium Dead is a fast read. I finished in one evening and got to bed early. Don’t think that it’s written in a juvenile style though. There aren’t a lot of big words or heavy historical allusions but it’s meant for adults.

I recommend Medium Dead. In fact, I just started another Dolley novel, Resonance. Always a happy event to find a new author!

Excellent and Not Just for Kids! The Paladin Prophecy Fantasy by Mark Frost

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I was up till 12:45 last night. Why? The Paladin Prophecy: Book 1 kept me up. Just a few more pages, just until we find out what’s going on.

This book could have been 539 pages of copy cat fiction, with a helping from number 4, mortal coil and a dose of harry potter. The plot uses Will, a teen hero who unexpectedly gets a perfect score on a standardized test and gets recruited for a special school. Sound familiar? Last month I read Diamond In My Pocket that had a similar starting point but dwindled to a mediocre YA fantasy. The Paladin Prophecy turns that on its head in the first 4 pages.

Will wakes up feeling a “queasy cocktail of impending doom” that takes on shape when he sees the dark sedans that seem to be chasing him on his way to school.  The book takes off from that.  We have a raft of interesting characters, including Will’s nutty roommate Nick, adults that may be just what they seem or not, a New Zealander that drives a souped up hot rod (and who happens to be dead), obnoxious bullies at school and of course other friends and roomies.

The Paladin Prophecy is listed as YA fiction but it’s not really. True, the main characters are teens and author Mark Frost glides past plot and background elements that adult novels may explore a bit. But the characters feel real and the underlying conflict is not for kids. Plus the dialogue, setting, people are richly done and the plot moves at 90 miles an hour. Which is how I found myself nearly done at 12:30 and staying up just a few more minutes to finish the ending.

You notice the “Book 1” in The Paladin Prophecy: Book 1. We ended with many loose ends:

  • Are the school headmaster, teachers and board part of the conspiracy?  Or are they good guys?  Or a mix?   The ending gives us very good reason to suspect the school is not on the side of the angels.
  • Why did Will’s roommates believe him almost at once?
  • What happened to Dave?
  • Who is “The Old Gentleman” and does he have a human analogue?
  • How did the roommates get their abilities and why?
  • Is the conspiracy really done?  (Of course not, but we need to find out!)

Book 2 is out now too, Alliance: The Paladin Prophecy Book 2, and from Amazon’s descriptions there will be at least one more.  I intend to get that one just as soon as possible!

Two Fantasy Novels I Did Not Finish: City of Dark Magic and The Rithmatist

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Sorry, I could not finish either of these.

City of Dark Magic: A Novel

I had more fun reading about the Lobkowicz family and the Prague castles on Wikipedia than reading City of Dark Magic: A Novel. Nothing really wrong with the book, except there wasn’t much to it. The historical back story was interesting; the characters and their problems were not.

I got about half through, decided it was pretty boring and skipped to the end because I was curious about the senator and her role in the mix. Got the answer, closed the book. Yes, I am interested in Prague but not enough to read the rest of the novel.

The Rithmatist

For those who love Brandon Sanderson’s work, this will be heresy. But I have not yet found a book by him that caught my imagination and made me want to spend a couple of hours with it. Mistborn was OK, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to look for the sequels.

The Rithmatist is listed as a YA title and the main characters are teens. I found the book dull because the characters were not interesting.

The back story was intriguing. Why would a high class school spend so much time and energy educating Rithmatists when supposedly their creations did not affect the real world? Is the study only good for dueling or is there a practical use? Why is the North American continent a bunch of islands? How did the chalkings go wild?

This novel didn’t get to these questions. Instead it was true to the YA market and focused on Joel and his desire to be a Rithmatist.  Some days a good coming-of-age story hits the spot, but not today.

Like Armor? Fantasy Novel The Red Knight – Miles Cameron

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If you like armor or sword and sorcery or just fantasy / alternate history novel you’ll enjoy The Red Knight (The Traitor Son Cycle). The novel is billed as book one of The Traitor Son Cycle, with book two recently published.

The Red Knight is the first fantasy by Miles Cameron, who has written historical fiction under a different name. The Red Knight is heavy with medieval combat, armor, knighthood, set in Alba which is somewhat similar to England.  They are at odds with The Wild, a poorly defined bunch of humans and non-humans, many with magic.  The Wild wants to take back their former stronghold, which a religious order now owns and is using as a convent.  It is the Abbess of this convent who hires the Red Knight’s mercenary company for security.

The Red Knight is complicated and long, over 600 pages, with at least 6 main groups of characters and over 50 individually named people. When I finally got to about page 500 I started skimming a little since some of the character groups did not seem germane to the story and did not interest me.

This story sprawls over and could benefit from editing. Do we really need to know the Sossig bands? They are barbarians in conflict with the Kingdom of Alba who played a peripheral role in the story, yet we had a good 50 pages and another 10 or so characters. The drovers and their group also did not seem important and didn’t add much. The last episode where they visit the Wyrm is a set up for sequels, but again, adds little except word count.

Two big improvements would be a list of characters and a map to make it easier to keep track of the people and places. Some characters had the same last names or similar first names that made them hard to keep straight.

Another huge improvement would be to cut down on the armor and weapons descriptions. Over and over and over we get to read about the armor, how costly, how heavy, how time consuming to put on and take off. Rinse and repeat, and then do it all over again. Frankly, I’m not real interested in armor. Tell me once and I’m happy. The author says in his Afterword that he is involved in medieval re-enactments and the novel shows his expertise. But unless you are really interested in swords and bill hooks and gauntlets and and and, you won’t care and you’ll wish he just GOT ON WITH IT.

These are flaws that made reading longer and a bit tedious, but overall the book is good. There were a few surprises.

One odious character was the Galle (aka French?) pompous knight, who said with complete sincerity that his sword was all the justification he needed to exert low, middle and high justice. He killed two squires, burnt an inn and threw the town constable tied up into a stable. Why? Because the innkeeper and the squires’ knight didn’t immediately recognize his innate superiority and give him the best room.

I expected that this creep would take the Lancelot approach and try to win over the Queen, but that never happened.

Another was that the Queen and the Abbess both play prominent roles and are figures of power. And the Red Knight does not win his fair lady.

Besides adding a map and character list, editing out a few groups of characters, telling us only once about each piece of armor and weapon, there are a few other factors that limited my enjoyment.

  • We never learn much about the main character, the Red Knight. We get glimpses, but little background and very limited character development.
  • The world building is sketchy.   Alba is a land that is recovering from a massive fight with The Wild a generation ago. Clearly there should be a lot going on politically and personally, but we don’t see it.
  • There are allusions to political brangles and possibly traitorous vassals, but I’d have liked more meat as that would explain a great deal of the back story.
  • For some reason Alba has a major agricultural fair at the convent, even though it is implied to be out of the way.  That begs the question of why there?  What’s going on behind the scenes that keeps a convent and its territory as the prime destination for millions of gold pieces?
  • We don’t know much about The Wild. Some are monstrous, some are described as “guardians” or “just folks” yet will eat their human enemies alive.
  • The magic system is sketchy.

I enjoyed The Red Knight enough to look for the second book. But if The Fell Sword (Book 2 The Traitor Son Cycle) is another 600 page rehash of armor, weapons and irrelevant characters then I won’t finish it.

Hunted, Book Six in Iron Druid Chronicles, Kevin Hearne Fantasy Book Review

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Finally the most recent book in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicals, Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six), came to my library. I’ve been waiting for it. The Iron Druid stories are not my favorite fantasy series by a long shot – there is something just missing that’s subtle but important – but I enjoyed the books enough to want to know how Atticus, Granuaile and Oberon would wrap things up, avoid the Olympians and head off Ragnarok.  You can read my prior reviews here:  Iron Druid Chronicles Series by Kevin Hearne

Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six) is still missing something. It marked the first time that Atticus reflected on the truly horrible choices he made that caused the Norse, Roman and Greek pantheons to all want him dead. That was an important step because it was frustrating to read a character making dumb choice after immoral choice after really dumb choice book after book. Those choices did not make sense for character who had lived 2100 years by lying low and avoiding trouble.

Hunted doesn’t feel like a complete story. It gets Atticus and crew squared away with the Greeks and Romans – or most of them – and we see evidence that he’s on great terms with Odin, the Norse godlet that previously sought his blood. But we don’t see a conclusion, more ongoing magic and trouble while Atticus, Granuaile and Oberon run for their lives from Romania to England. There is a section at the end that feels almost like a throwaway subplot where Atticus nearly gets nailed by a manticore. It’s a set up for seventh book where we’ll learn who of the Tuatha Dé Danann has it in for him.

My library’s edition included the novella Two Ravens and One Crow which explained how Atticus ended up good buddies with Odin. That was good because my first reaction reading the good cheer between the groups was huh? It’s been a few months since I read the last one, but surely I would remember who had Atticus on their Kill List.

Previous novels featured the dog Oberon and developed him as a character.  Hunted tells the story from Granuaile’s point of view but we don’t really learn anything more about her other than she loves being a druid and loves the connection to the earth. Atticus worries that she’s developing a bit of self-righteous violence and we see that, but it’s only hinted at and left as possible future conflict. Hunted does not develop the characters or the story line all that much. It wraps up some sub plots, especially with the extra novella, but it only touches on the whole vampire/Lief conflict. The book has more magic than some of the earlier ones, but it’s just that, magic, sort of poof! and good things happen.

In hindsight, I particularly enjoyed the earlier novels where Atticus took a proactive role, pushing the narrative, while in Hunted he is reactive. He reacts to the Olympian threat by running; he manages to magically heal himself after being shot; he escapes the manticore.

It just isn’t enough.  I will read the seventh book when it comes out, but if this were the first book I had read in the series it would have been the only book I read.

The Circle of Sorcerers, Mages of Bloodmyr Fantasy, Brian Kittrel

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About all I can say about The Circle of Sorcerers: A Mages of Bloodmyr Novel: Book #1 is that I managed to read it in a couple of hours.  My Nook said it had 629 pages, but each page was only one Nook screen; I’d guess this would be 300 pages in a real book.  It was a fast read but not a good read.

There wasn’t anything really wrong with this, just there wasn’t anything very good either. The world building was mediocre; characters were bland and dull; plot was interesting but sketchy.

The main characters are 16 year old men from a small village.  The hero Laedron is off to learn to be a sorcerer under the tutelage of Ismeralda. The backdrop to the story is a religious controversy that spills into war. Ismeralda is murdered by leaders of the Heraldan church, Laedron escapes and joins a militant order of mages and knights. He meets up again with his friends from his village who coincidentally also are in the same order and they are assigned to assassinate one of the church leaders.

The plot has promise but it never really works out and I could not get interested enough to care about the characters. The odd thing was Kittrel only sketched the plot and back story, but spent paragraphs describing the food they ate. I almost stopped reading after the first two page description of Leadron’s mom’s cooking. It felt like the author got paid by the word and it was easier to describe food than characters, setting or plot.

I got this after seeing many highly complimentary reviews on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  In fact both sites have this at a 4 star rating. I would give this a 3, decent, not great. It was free of those obnoxious grammatical and spelling errors we see in so many free or low cost E books, and had been edited. The biggest disappointment was to get to page 629 and realize the book just stops. It is apparently the first of a trilogy (of course, what else). I don’t intend to read the other two books.

A Diamond in My Pocket, Lorena Angell, YA Fantasy, First In A Series

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I have been reading a lot but not writing reviews; it’s time to get back into blogging.  One way I find new authors is from the “people who liked this also bought” links at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  Another is from the site BookBub.  They send a daily newsletter with books in your preferred genre that are free or heavily discounted.  Since I like books and don’t want to spend a fortune, this is a good thing.

Today’s book, A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), came from BookBub. It was free and frankly, I am glad I didn’t pay anything for it.

There isn’t anything wrong with A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered), it just isn’t very good. It features 16 year old Calli Courtnae who suddenly can run like the wind. She develops even more powers after being entrusted with a magical diamond to carry in secret to deliver to the Death Clan.

I think you can see the problem right there. “Powers”, “magic diamonds”, “Death Clan”. I don’t have a problem with ideas like this – after all fantasy is my favorite genre and we know fantasy novels are full of nutty sounding stuff. But the constant repetition about “powers” got tiresome. Couple that with a typical 16 year old girl’s normal worries about cute guys and you have a book that teens will love and we adults, sadly, not so much.

A Diamond In My Pocket (The Unaltered) has over 4 1/2 stars on Amazon and is #3000 in the Free Kindle section. I’m not sure quite why it is so popular. It’s reasonably well written, without terrible grammar that plagues so many free E books. The plot is interesting and the characters are so-so. I read it to the end and was reasonably entertained, but it left too many strings hanging and is obviously set up for a sequel.

Mostly I just got tired of the “powers” stuff and how Courtney could peek in someone’s head and see their future. Courtney tried different decisions in her head until she found an outcome she liked. Gee, that’s handy. Yoda said it best: “Difficult to see is the future, always in motion.” Courtney had no problem at all. Not only could she see the future but she could play around with it, make a different decision in her head, and see a different future. That got silly.

I’d give it 3 stars for the dangling strings and over-the-top “powers”.

The Silver Star Jeannette Walls Contemporary Fiction

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The Silver Star: A Novel by Jeannette Walls is my first encounter with this gifted author. Overall I found the book exquisite, well-written, several interesting and challenging themes, and some excellent characters.

However, although the book moved well in some sections it badly dragged in others. It is marketed to adults, not to kids, but I think middle school and older would enjoy it and probably find the characters familiar. We all know people like Bean and her sister Liz. I hope most of us don’t have a mother like theirs, feckless, all too ready to run and to blame everyone else for everything. Sadly most of us have known someone like Jerry Maddox, the foreman at the mill who employs Bean and Liz to get back at their uncle and to demonstrate his absolute power.

The story plays out against the backdrop of integration in a small Virginia town, where the white star football player would rather lose than to throw to a black receiver, where Jerry Maddox feels free to slap and fondle the employees on his shift, where Liz and Bean’s Uncle Tinsley lives in a decaying mansion, managing on what is left from his inheritance. The integration plot line is barely sketched in. It is not the focus of the novel, simply background, which is fine since the story revolves around Bean.

The most interesting character is Bean’s mother, a loose and immature actress and singer wannabe who has never acted in a movie or recorded a song. Yet she sees herself as the victim of her hometown and her family while she chases the next new thing. Bean loves her but learns all too well how erratic and unstable her mother is, and how even her children aren’t motivation to act responsibly and grow up.

Overall this is excellent. I don’t know that I want to read the other books by Jeannette Walls as they share similar themes of children overcoming adult bullying and parental neglect.  I’ll choose a happy story any day.

Ask Bob: A Novel by Peter Gethers Can a Vet Find Love Writing a Pet Advice Column?

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Before Ask Bob: A Novel the only books I read by Peter Gethers were about Norton, his wonderful cat. I loved the Norton books although I wasn’t quite sure I loved the author; he’s a bit fond of himself for my taste.

Ask Bob: A Novel substitutes Dr. Robert Heller for Peter Gethers narrating, but it is otherwise unmistakably by the same author. They are stylistically similar and the main human characters share common qualities and attitudes.

Dr. Bob is a young veterinarian beginning his practice in Manhattan. He and his beloved wife Anna live in the small upstairs apartment above both the practice and his partner’s larger apartment. Bob takes in strays that show up at the practice, human and animal, beginning with Rocky a small cat.

He begins to write a pet advice column in “New York’s most popular newspaper”. I enjoyed reading the introductions to each Ask Bob letter to see how he progressed, from an occasional appearance on television to a regular appearance, and from one book to three. The pet advice column was great, especially the grammatical lesson.

Ask Bob: A Novel moves quickly through the early years. Bob was so very happy with Anna and devastated when she dies of cancer. He does find love again, twice in fact, but you do have to wonder about his heart. The relationship with the last lady puzzled me. It started with instant desire but I never could see where the true love, the love that is based on one’s will and heart, vs. based only on one’s emotions and lust, was built. I did not find the character believable or likable.

The book is structured as a series of vignettes that together flow from one to the next, with Letters to Ask Bob acting as dividers between mini stories and as counterpoint. The Bob letters usually have some tie in to the vignettes.

I found a few annoyances. One was the constant reference to dysfunctional families. Bob, Anna and Bob’s eventual second wife, all came from families one could call “dysfunctional”. But don’t we all have some degree of oddness in our families? Bob describes Anna’s family as atrocious and Anna herself called her parents abusive, but when he and Anna visit them the family comes across more as sad than as awful. Anna’s mother behaved terribly at her funeral, but the other members simply were different, not living as fully as they could. Dr. Bob, (apparently as does Peter Gethers himself) does not believe in God and doesn’t miss many opportunities to say so.

What made the book excellent was Dr. Bob’s growth as a full human, not only as Dr. Heller or as Anna’s husband, but as a son, as an uncle, as a friend, as a pet owner. The man who started out feeling vulnerable and alone finds happiness with people and in his ability to give to them and to take from them in love.

Overall I enjoyed this very much and give it 5 stars.