More Books than Time

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

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

Royal Tournament by Richard H. Stephen – Beautiful Cover on a Morality Tale

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I picked Royal Tournament by Richard H. Stephen based on the cover and his website artwork linked in from Instafreebie.  I am a sucker for medieval stories and this one looked promising.

Royal Tournament is a novella featuring Javan, son of a local farmer who is the reigning jousting champion in his baron’s territory.  Now the king is visiting the baron and holding the royal tournament at the castle right near Javan.  Of course he must compete.

Compliments

The story itself is unusual for a fantasy set in a medieval world.  Javan makes friends with a dark-skinned man from one of the kingdom’s allies.  The stranger defeats one of the kingdom’s knights who is badly injured in the joust.  His men take revenge on the stranger and then turn their violence on Javan when he tries to intervene.  I’ve noticed more fantasies taking on themes of racism and basic fairness, and it was good to see a novella that handles this without moralizing or sermons.  Javan simply does the right thing for the right reasons; he acts honorably.

The other plot-related pleasant surprise is the ending.  Normally the young hero wins the competition, somehow defeating everyone.  That doesn’t happen, resulting in a more believable outcome.

Not So Good

I’m no expert in feudal economics but the whole Javan set up didn’t make a lot of sense.  If he and his father worked their land alone – without hired hands or even seasonal help – then they could only farm a small plot.  In that case they couldn’t afford the trained warhorse or even dented armor for Javan or be on such good terms with the baron.

There were a few other points that felt off, but the economic set up was the most obvious.

Overall

I enjoyed this short novella, but probably not enough to pursue more books by this author.

3 Stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 Stars

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Six – Not the Best

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I’ve read and enjoyed every book Jodi Taylor wrote because they are fun, with great characters, lively plots, plenty of humor under laid by serious conflicts.  What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: The Chronicles of St. Mary’s Book Six is not a weak book.  We again have Max doing Max things, this time training new historian wannabes, with all the usual adventures and danger.  Yet I didn’t like What Could Possibly Go Wrong? anywhere near as much as the other books in the series.

Why, oh why, would anyone want to observe Joan of Arc’s execution?  Max justifies her decision to use this horrific event as her make-or-break/witness-gore-and-death training moment by saying that Joan would burn whether they observe or not.  That is true, but there is something wrong with using someone’s agonizing, tortured death to educate.  It is using another person’s suffering and even though Max’s reason is virtuous, the act is not.

The scene with the mammoth hunt is great and Mary the Mammoth is a fantastic addition to St. Mary’s lore.  I always enjoy Taylor’s detailed descriptions of the history and this view of Neanderthals and modern humans living together and hunting mammoths is superb as always.

Max allows one of her trainees to hijack the pod and visit Bosworth Field, which sets her feet on the wrong side of the line and leads to her actions in the next book, Lies, Damned Lies and History.

Overall my distaste for the Joan of Arc scene tramples the otherwise excellent What Could Possibly Go Wrong?   I find myself disinclined to re-read it (I’ve re-read all the other books multiple times) although others apparently liked it very well.  What Could Possibly Go Wrong?  has the highest Amazon rating of all the St. Mary’s books, with no 2 or 1 star reviews and a handful of 3 stars.

3 Stars

Blood Crossed: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Novel, #1 (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department)

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Blood Crossed: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Novel, #1 (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department) has great reviews on Amazon, enough that I paid $2.99 to read it.  That was a mistake.

Blood Crossed uses the trope of a police department dedicated to protecting us from vampires, werewolves and assorted supernatural evil villains.  The main character is Piper, a young woman, supposedly immortal (we don’t know how), who with her new partner Reaper Payne (also immortal and not human), goes out to capture vampire Gallien Cross who escaped from secure confinement.  So far so good.

Unfortunately neither Piper nor Payne nor the two wanna-be Retrievers that Piper is to evaluate are particularly interesting.  The world building could be good but authors Logsdon and Young race us through the back story without taking time to let the set up take shape.  The writing isn’t bad, and the dialogue is reasonably decent at moving the story along, but the lack of character depth an superficial world building leave me cold.

The authors have a sequel with even better reviews and ratings, but I shall pass.

2 Stars

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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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Wrath of the Fury Blade – An Elven Police Procedural with Racial Overtones

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Wrath of the Fury Blade tries to be several things:  It is a police procedural, a commentary on Nazism, a semi-romance and a fantasy.  The story itself is engaging, with police elf Reva Lunaria untangling the mysterious murder of the First Magistrate, a murder where the victim is cut completely in half, in his own home, with no witnesses.  A second murder, this time of the kingdom’s finance minister, soon follows, then more attacks and murders.

Elvish Nazis

It’s clear that someone has a vendetta against a group of people, but what ties the group together?  Reva’s only clue is the pin that each victim wears, from a club dedicated to elven racial purity; the victims’ pins all have one black star, possibly indicating a secret sub group.

Here’s where the Nazi problem comes in.  The king promulgated Purity Laws three times, each one decades apart, and each one increasingly strict.  Now a person with a great grandparent who was not elvish is no longer an elf and cannot own property nor be married to an elf.  (The authors say this is Fascism, but Fascists revere the State, not the blood.  Nazis revere “pure” blood.)

This Nazi/Jim Crow/Apartheid nasty mess is a backdrop that doesn’t add much to the story.  It explains a little why some of the secret society is so careful to hide their Dark Elf ancestry, but we didn’t need the entire Jim Crow racial nonsense to make that point work.  The authors brought in a few incidents with the now-denigrated non-elves that felt pasted on, as if they initially intended to make those incidents a big part of the story, then changed their mind and left the stubs.

The primary story, Revi and her new partner Ansee, unraveling the murders and finding the culprit, is good.  It moves fast and is engaging.  The secondary story, with the Gestapo-like Sucra working hand-in-hand with the new police commissioner, is also quite well done.

This secondary story is terrifying all by itself as we see the Sucra’s Senior Inquisitor Malvaceä torturing, imprisoning without cause, extorting, killing and setting up false trails.  I’d like to see the authors further develop the primary story against the backdrop of this secret police threat to the king and kingdom.

Overall

Wrath of the Fury Blade is readable and I mostly enjoyed it.  There were a few spots that are far-fetched, for example, when Revi’s long time information source not only recognizes the pins but knows there is a centuries-long plot against the king that ties into the pins.

The characters were fairly interesting but not well developed enough to carry the novel without the fast plot.  Revi felt too much like a composite police/dectective/good guy crime fighter and the authors dropped a few clues that she may have more going on than the stock character they present.

Wrath of the Fury Blade leaves us ready for a sequel.  I think we’ll have more Revi/Ansee interactions, possibly more about Revi’s family and murdered father and we’ll see why Ansee and his sister do not get along. I’m hoping the authors build onto the Sucra threat.  I also hope the authors write a little less of a multi-genre mash up and concentrate on the characters and pick one or two main stories.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

3 Stars

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Shi: A Dark Adventure into Living Forever (Immortality Interrupted Book 1) C. F. Villon

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Shi: A Dark Adventure into Living Forever (Immortality Interrupted Book 1) has its good points and its bad.  On the good side the story moves along and kept my attention as I wondered what Eliza would do, the group she served, and how she would extricate herself.  On the bad side the story is ridiculous and the character left me cold.

Eliza made a very bad bargain 80 years ago.  On the one hand she escapes murder charges and now gets to live “forever”.  On the other hand her “forever” is contingent upon her always doing what her unknown bosses tell her to do, enforced by a drug, Shi, that confers youth and life, if she gets a dose every day.  Dose Denial is a death sentence because this drug withdrawal is a killer.

Characters

Author Villon presents Eliza to us as a normal soccer mom, aside from her assassin skills, secret hideout and drug problem of course.  Consistent with her “normal mom” persona, Eliza feels emotionally invested with her ex husband’s grandchildren, even though she knows none of them and detested her ex for dumping her.

Eliza is a murderer, a true villain, yet we somehow see her as likable and root for her to find a way to ditch the organization.  She shows her selfish side when she idly makes a crack to her drug administrator about him skimming – despite knowing that such actions will cause the organization to kill him.  She also will not give up the imitation immortality, and it appears she wouldn’t give up the Shi even if she could do so safely without dying 24 hours later.

Her character is inconsistent.  Eliza has no reason to trust anyone associated with the organization but follows Asher.

Overall

I didn’t like the premise or the characters but must admit I finished Shi and enjoyed parts of it.  I don’t intend to read the sequels.  I’m curious how it ends but do not care what happens to the characters.

3 Stars

 

A Trail Through Time – Max Runs for Her Life, Saves the Day and Grows Up Jodi Taylor

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Last we saw Madeline Maxwell, historian at the St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, she was sprawled on the carpet, bleeding from a should-have-been fatal sword thrust through her heart, courtesy of Agincourt.  A Trail Through Time picks up directly after A Second Chance, with Max solidly in a parallel world, one where she had died and Leon lived, one with virtually the same people, with similar personalities as she knew.

Leon Farrell owns the carpet Max just bled all over and he isn’t sure what to think.  Sure, he’s delighted to have Max – any Max – back, but he knows darn well that his Max is dead from carbon monoxide and cremated.  Nonetheless Leon jumps to save this new Max when mysterious men in black arrive at his home in Rushford, and he whirls her off in his own personal time pod.

Thus begins a wild ride through time as Max and Leon desperately search for a place where they can relax, get to know each other and Max can heal her chest wound.  Unfortunately the men in black are the Time Police, a group that Max’s original world never had, and they are after Leon.  Max and Leon escape by a whisker in ancient Greece, in frozen London, in ancient Thebes, and finally realize that the Time Police find them so easily because Max has a tag in her arm.  Max comes up with a brilliant plan to take care of this problem (which doesn’t work) and finally Leon brings her to St. Mary’s for medical care.

At St. Mary’s we learn the real problem is that the original Max, now dead, brought Helios back from Troy and someone ratted her out to the Time Police.  Bringing someone from their time is a capital offense and the Police are determined to see the leadership of this St. Mary’s executed and replaced by a more amenable team lead by none other than our old friend Isabella Barclay.

Plot Holes

Just like all the other St. Mary’s novels A Trail Through Time moves so quickly that we run right by most plot holes.  Just ignore these when you see them and you can enjoy the story!

First, Max finds that B**hFace Barclay is still around and had supposedly been the original Max’s good friend.  We get hints from several of the more astute St. Mary’s people that Miss Barclay is maybe not so liked and trusted as she thinks, but the woman is still there while in Max’s original world Miss Barclay was kicked out when she marooned people back with the dinosaurs and tried to usurp the directorship.  Max comments a couple times about the dinosaur rescue in later novels, so we know people were marooned in this world too.  How is Miss Barclay not tainted by her role?  We don’t know.

In Max’s original world Leon had rescued Helios, bringing him to the future St. Mary’s where he grew up, then later to our time where Helios runs an inn.  In this alternate world Max did the rescue and only a few years have passed, yet Helios is grown up.

Characters

Max is growing up!  (Finally.)  She tells Leon that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be as terrible as seeing him dead.  Leon feels the same about her.  This grief and miraculous do-over help Max max mature.  She is hurt and upset that the St. Mary’s people don’t accept her at first, although this is understandable given they all grieved for the original Max.  Max knows this in her head but her heart suffers.

Max still doesn’t trust people easily and accuses Dr. Bairstow and Tim Peterson of wanting to maroon her in the 14th century, and accuses Mrs. Partridge (aka Kleio the Muse of History) of sacrificing Max to the Time Police in order to allow the others to go free.  Neither suspicion makes much sense (especially the second one) but that’s Max.

A few of the other characters take on more life in A Trail Through Time.  Professor Rapson and Dr. Dowson emerge from their stereotype caricatures to be real people, friends and colleagues to each other and the first to welcome Max as herself, not as a sort-of substitute.

Overall

A Trail Through Time is the story of Max rebuilding her life in this new world, creating friends and establishing herself as a person.  In the sense of a new beginning it has echoes of Book 1, Just One Damned Thing After Another, but with more terror, more threats, much more to lose.  In Book 1 Max could lose herself and her life.  Now she could lose her life and those of people she loves, Major Guthrie, Dr. Bairstow, Tim Peterson and Leon, and see St. Mary’s destroyed.  That makes the story more believable as it heightens the suspense and the conflicts.

I am glad to see the characters develop and adding the Time Police adds more opportunity for conflict and threat.  Clive Ronan is a serious opponent but he is a fraction of the problem the Time Police could be. Overall this is an excellent addition to an already good series.

5 Stars

Review: The Memory Magus: The Haze by Dean F. Wilson

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This short story came to me through InstaFreebie and the cover and title intrigued me so I read it.  Unfortunately the title is the best part as the story has no plot, no point, no character development, no setting.

An old enemy arrives one evening and demands that Magus Ladesan uses his memory altering talent to ensures this enemy wins an election.  The method is brutally simple:  first extort and torture voters then erase memories and record their vote.

That’s the story.  Bad guy wins.

1 Star

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