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

The Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan YA Fantasy Fiction Book 1 Chronicles

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Faerie Wars is the first book in The Faerie Wars Chronicles by Herbie Brennan. When I started this book some of the scenes were familiar, but I don’t think I read the full novel before.

Faerie Wars was a treat to read. It starts off with hero Henry Atherton recognizing that his parents are having problems and suspecting his Dad of an affair. Although the family troubles are a background note to the series and frame some of Henry’s choices, they are not a key part of the plot and Henry’s family are side characters.

Characters are Grand

The important characters are Henry, his eccentric employer Mr. Fogarty, the Faery crown prince Pyrgus and princess Blue, the Purple Emperor and several wonderfully rotten villains. The villains don’t have many redeeming qualities – in fact none – but they are not cardboard cutouts either. You understand what motivates them (money and power), their goals (power, money and survival) and although the depth of wickedness is stunning, it is reasonable for characters who value power and money above everything.

Faerie Wars could have been a classic coming-of-age story. All three young characters, Henry, Pyrgus and Blue, grow during the novel and Henry develops the backbone to assert himself with his parents and creepy sister. But this too is a side note, a secondary plot, and does not detract from the serious story.

The heart of Faerie Wars is how the Purple Emperor can keep his realm together and overcome deep divisions between faeries of the dark and faeries of the light.  War looms. The faeries live in the Purple Empire in an analogue world to Earth. They are human. The two sides have different religions, eyes and the dark faeries have a far greater tolerance for demons and a propensity to seek power and money.

Plot Moves and Captures Interest

Pyrgus needs to take refuge in the Analogue World (our Earth) but someone sabotages the portal. Pyrgus ends up in Mr. Fogarty’s backyard, with wings and about 6 inches tall. Henry rescues Pyrgus from Mr. Fogarty’s cat. When Pyrgus reverts to his natural shape and size the two boys help Mr. Fogarty (former particle physicist and bank robber) build a portal from our side. Unfortuately Pyrgus is impatient and instead of waiting for Mr. Fogarty to test the portal, he plunges in and ends up in the other analogue world, Hael.

Demons live in Hael and seek entrance to Faerie world or Earth to wreak destruction and misery. Their leader is Beleth who captures Pyrgus and devises a tormenting death for him. Henry manages to rescue Pyrgus with help from Blue.

Highly Recommend

Faerie Wars is fun and fast to read. The characters are sympathetic and interesting. I even found myself hoping a few of the lesser villains would survive another book, despite their vile actions and nasty attitudes.

Faerie Wars is listed as YA Fiction. I would categorize it as a book that younger people could enjoy for the plot and characters, which adults would enjoy too. We adults also realize the the Purple Emperor faces a real dilemma, one that we face in our world too, and that adds depth to the story that we enjoy.

4 Stars.

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The Cinderella Deal, Romantic Comedy by Jennifer Crusie

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Jennifer Crusie has an intriguing forward for The Cinderella Deal, calling it her first book where she decided to mute the light ironic touch in favor of letting the characters – and readers – experience real emotion. As she states: “Good stories are about hearts and minds but the heart always comes first”.

I wasn’t sure whether this would be a tear jerker or a romantic comedy with a dose of mid life crisis or what I was getting into. The Cinderella Deal turned out to be a very good story with fun characters, interesting plot, great dialogue and setting.

The Characters

Daisy left her teaching job to pursue her dream of being an artist.  After four years she has depleted her savings, she still hasn’t had her first show, she can’t even get the jerky craft boutique to pay her what they owe.  She lives in an older building with her cat Liz.  Daisy is on the verge of panic knowing she doesn’t have this month’s rent and her dreams are looking more and more tarnished around the edges.

Daisy is one of those open hearted people that everyone feels a warm bond with.  She dresses a bit eccentrically and has a penchant for rescuing beat up furniture and lamps because they appeal to her and giving cats a home even though she is not allowed pets.  She is very wary of her tall handsome neighbor Linc because he drives a Porsche and moved Liz with his foot.  Linc is definitely not her type!

Linc teaches history at a city university.  He is ambitious and wants to write another book, but he also wants to move to a liberal arts college where he will have more time for research and writing and smaller classes to teach.  He is handsome and at the moment is in between girl friends.  He prefers small blond ladies who are well organized and articulate.  Daisy is definitely not his type!

Other characters are Julia, Daisy’s best friend, Chickie, the put-upon wife of the lecherous dean Crawford, Evan, the rather morose professor, various students, the local vet and of course Daisy’s pets Liz, new kitten and rescue dog Jupiter.  Daisy and Linc’s mothers show up to “help” with the wedding and later her father with second wife appear too.

The Plot

Linc needs a fiancee, in fact a wife, to get his dream job.  Daisy needs money.  See where this is going?  Linc offers Daisy $1000 to pose as his fiancee for a weekend when he visits the college for his job interview.  When he tried to tell the dean that Daisy broke the “engagement”, Crawford has a fit and orders Linc to go get her.  They agree to marry for a year, then separate with no hard feelings.

Naturally love gets in the way although neither one realizes it. Linc is restrained, cool, not inclined to invite students to his home.  Daisy is the opposite.  Daisy moves all of Linc’s contemporary furniture upstairs and puts her shabby, mismatched furniture in its place.  Linc hates her furniture, calls it junk.  Students arrive; Linc’s mother arrives and gets terribly ill; Daisy paints the house, the furniture and pictures of Linc.

Sure, the final ending is preordained.  Linc and Daisy fall in love.  But how we get there is lots of fun.  I thoroughly enjoyed The Cinderella Deal.

Lots of Fun, Great Weekend Read

If you’re in the mood for something a little on the light side but not all fluff, then try The Cinderella Deal.  This is not  highfalutin literature but it’s not junk by any stretch.

In fact I liked The Cinderella Deal so much I got more books by Jenifer Crusie!

4 Stars

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The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom, Contemporary Fable Fiction Review

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The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom is a fable meant to show the value of time, of living in the present and enjoying God’s gifts without fretting about more.

The story alternates between three people, Dor, a young man obsessed with measuring time, Sara Lemon, a teenager infatuated with a boy she feels is far above her touch, and Victor Delamonte, a rich man facing his imminent death by cancer and kidney failure.

Dor begins innocently to count the number of days from moon phase to moon phase, then moves into measuring time by a sundial and water clock. His counting becomes his obsession. He puts measuring ahead of caring for his family. Eventually a former playmate, Nim, sets himself as the king and builds the Tower of Babel. Nim seeks Dor’s help, and when spurned, orders Dor to leave the area. Dor and his beloved wife Alli end up living several miles away from their family. When Alli falls ill, Dor runs to the Tower to climb to heaven and stop time at its source.  When he climbs it the Tower falls.

Dor is the first person to count time and is punished for it by being forced to live in a cave for several thousand years and listen to all the misery that people find for themselves by focusing on time. Dor becomes Father Time.

Sarah is smart and fat. She wants cute Ethan but Ethan rejects her as cruelly as possible.  In despair Sarah decides to end her life.  She doesn’t think past her misery and her desire to hurt Ethan by hurting herself.  She wants less time.

Victor decides to pursue “immortality” by freezing himself just before death. He will not accept death and wants more time.  He knows his wife Grace will not accept this.

The story shows how Dor helps Sarah and Victor recognize the value of their lives as they are given them to live. Dor himself finds his punishment complete and is freed.

The Theme

The Time Keeper is an essay written as a story. Albom’s theme is that “man alone suffers a paralyzing fear…A fear of time running out.”

I agree with his premise – to a point. One of the challenges in my Catholic faith is the balance between planning and trusting in God. Christ himself likened the kingdom to the five wise virgins who brought extra lamp oil and the five foolish ones who came ill-prepared for a long wait.  Yet the lilies of the fields and the creatures of the earth live without planning and God provides.

We as humans are accountable for how we use time, not how we measure it or long for it or hope it runs faster or slower.

The Punishment

It disturbed me that Dor is punished so severely.  His offense was to give the ability to measure time to the world.  Does that truly warrant several thousand years listening to the world’s misery?  Or was his sin more that he prized his measurements above all else, that he focused not on the gift of time, the gift of life, but only measured it.  It reminds me of the people who enjoy sports statistics more than they enjoy watching the game.

Thought Provoking

Overall I found this an enjoyable book that had an interesting concept.  The characters were very well done.  Sarah could have been a cardboard cutout but she felt and acted like a real person.  Victor too was more than the prototypical rich man obsessed with taking it with him.

Albom’s writing style is sparse and fast.  He doesn’t have extra scenes or extra characters or extra words.  Everything fits together beautifully.

The book is very fast reading; I read it in an evening, about two hours.  (I am a fast reader, so it might take two evenings for someone who reads at an average speed.)

The Time Keeper will stay with me. I doubt I will reread it, but the message of treating each moment as the precious gift that it is will stay with me.

Overall I recommend this to anyone. If you don’t care for the religious overtones then read and enjoy it for the story.

4 Stars

Another Faust – Book Review Dark Fantasy Fiction Daniel Dina Nayeri

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Another Faust kept coming up on my library searches and popped up in Amazon’s recommendations.  The novel, listed as YA dark fantasy, didn’t sound like something I’d care for.

The blurb was not appealing: “One night, in cities all across Europe, five children vanish only to appear, years later, at an exclusive New York party with a strange and elegant governess.” However, Another Faust was good and I enjoyed it.

The book starts with vignettes where four of the five children face their deepest fears and desires. Madame Vileroy meets each of the four and offers a bargain. They can come live with her, give up something small, and she will make their fears disappear and their deepest wants come true.

Of course, like any bargain with the devil, what the children gave away was far more important than what they received, and what they received was flawed and dangerous.

Victoria wanted to win, to be the smartest, know the most, win at anything that required intellectual prowess. What she really wanted was to be loved and be special to someone. What she received from Madame Villeroy was the ability to listen to others’ thoughts, to find what almost anyone said or did. What she lost was honor, empathy, a sense of fair play, a value for others. She became unpleasant and unlikable.

Belle wanted to be beautiful. At 10 she was already attractive but she wanted desperately to be beyond pretty. She bargained herself and her twin sister Bice and received beauty but at a horrible price. Underneath her beautiful exterior she hid rotting flesh and spirit. And she smelled. She stank of rot and sewage. Of course Madame Villeroy had a cure for that, but again, the cure was barely superficial and the cost was high.

Belle’s twin Bice was not swept up by her own desire. But she too traded. She traded time for learning.

Christian was desperately poor. He feared poverty and wanted to excel at sports to become rich. He traded himself for the ability to steal, however slight, from others with more talent, more ability. Madame Villeroy gave him a dummy man to practice on and a coffin-like chamber to rest and restore his body. Christian puts aside his dreams of being a writer to pursue fortune on the sports field.

Valentin also wanted to win, to be loved, to count for something. He dreamt of being a famous poet. He traded his anchor in time and place for the ability to unwind time and change events, for the illusion of success.

As the novel progresses we see how each of the children, now 15 years old and enrolled in the most exclusive school in New York, realize the poor bargain they made, face the fact that they sold their soul for nothing and what they decide to do about it. Three of them escape, albeit at a very high price, and two remain behind, hopefully to learn later as they grow that they can leave and that they can retrieve their souls.

One point I particularly enjoyed about the book was the way the authors treated “selling your soul to the devil”. The three children who escape realize that the sale is not like selling your house. Instead it is a day-by-day decision and a process of giving away small pieces of yourself over time. This is less dramatic than in “The Devil and Daniel Webster”, but far more likely to be the way it works. You don’t damn yourself in one dramatic action but in small steps, small losses, small cheats, small choices over the course of your life.

I highly recommend this novel to adults or older teens.

4 Stars

Fast Moving YA Fiction Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon Review

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I’ve had a busy week reading four fast moving, fun books.  It’s fun to read books with interesting characters, intriguing backgrounds and speed of light plots.  Of the four this week Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon was the most intriguing and fast moving.

I reviewed the first book, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, here in this blog post:  Review: The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp YA Fiction Rick Yancey.  The Seal of Solomon is the second book in the series.  The third book, Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull is reviewed here.

Alfred has landed with a couple who are professional foster parents. They have a small house, several foster kids, almost no discipline and less attention or care. After Alfred’s stint on the Most Wanted list he faces even more nasty tricks from his high school classmates. When beautiful blond, tanned Ashley shows up at school and wants to be his friend Alfred falls fast.

Ashley is an operative for OIPEP who saves Alfred from a killer and delivers him to Operative Nine who needs Alfred – badly. A renegade OIPEP agent stole Solomon’s seal and the vessel containing demons from hell and it’s up to Alfred, Ashley, Operative Nine to put stop him from setting the demons free. They fail. Demons are loose and on the hunt for Alfred. They want to control the seal and the vessel and need Alfred to help. In hindsight I’m not sure why they needed Alfred and no one else, but it made for a great story.

Alfred figures out how to trick the demons and once more saves the world. Along the way he inherits tons of money which makes his professional foster parents determined to forcibly draft him into adoption.

Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon is noteworthy for the intricate and interesting backdrop to the story. Who is Operative Nine and why does he have the authority he does. Why is renegade agent Mike so determined to kill Alfred. What would it be like to work for OIPEP. What will the demons do when they control the world.

Those questions swirled around in my mind but only as a footnote to the real questions about Alfred. He is an amazing person, able to ignore the constant nastiness at home and school, determined to grow and to do the right thing. He is believable, the character we all inwardly feel we are – bumbling, not too swift, and somehow responsible for far more than what we want.

Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon had excellent dialogue, a fun, super charged plot, fascinating back story, interesting characters. I highly recommend it. Like the other Alfred Kropp books this is characterized as YA fiction, aimed squarely at 12-18 year old boys, but it’s good enough for adults to enjoy.

Review: The Girl Who Chased the Moon, Sarah Addison Allen

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I don’t know how to categorize The Girl Who Chased the Moon.  Is it fantasy?  Romance?  Coming of age?  It’s all of these.  Sarah Addison Allen also wrote The Sugar Queen and Garden Spells, both also hard to classify.

This is an excellent book, a fast read with memorable characters and just enough plot twists to keep it moving.

All of Ms.Allen’s books are set in southern small towns; all include characters who took a wrong turn somewhere and need to come back and fix it. And all include a dose of fantasy. The Girl Who Chased the Moon includes fantastical wallpaper that changes to match the moods of the girl who lives in the room. There are strange lights that glow on moonlit nights and a continuing sense of things being just a bit awry. Our characters work through the novel to reset those things.

One thing I love about her books is that they have happy endings. No, not everything is perfectly resolved and you can peek around the corner to see that Emily will have the usual high school senior moments, that Stella needs to find her center, that Sawyer and Julia have work to do. But the characters are happy. They found peace and mended the broken relationships.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon has four main characters, Julia and Sawyer, Emily and Win. They have tangled histories, connected through their families. The back stories are left shrouded until the end of the book although we see pieces earlier.

It is this history that must be untangled and set upright. The minor characters are excellent: Stella, Julia’s landlord and friend; Morgan, Win’s father, Vance, Emily’s very tall grandfather, Beverly who is Julia’s rapacious ex stepmother. All are important and all feel like real people. You end up caring about them as much (or more) as about the main characters.

Ms. Allen knows her small town South. She shows the sense of place that is so important to the characters. Not only the geographical place, but the place within the society, the relationships that follow generations. I have never lived in the south but I feel like I have after reading her novels.

I highly recommend The Girl Who Chased the Moon and give it Five Stars.

I got my copy from the library. You can purchase copies of The Girl Who Chased the Moon at Amazon and at Barnes and Nobleicon.  The links in the post go to Amazon and pay commission.

Something Missing, Contemporary Fun Fiction by Matthew Dicks

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Here’s a book I just loved, Something Missing: A Novel.  No, it’s not science fiction, nor fantasy.  It’s not really a mystery either.  And it’s definitely not one of those “oh I’m so miserable and want to make you miserable too” novels (thank heavens).  It’s fun with a great character, Martin.

An Unusual Occupation

Do you know how many rolls of toilet paper or sticks of butter you have?  How about those towels you got as a gift five years ago?  Still there?  Do you have stuff in the back of your closet you would never miss?  I know I do.

So do Martin’s clients.  You see, Martin makes his living by visiting his clients every week or two and taking just things that he knows no one will miss.  That can of soup, wedding gift china, diamond earrings.  Martin is a thief with a most unusual business model.  For one thing he knows what a business model is and has carefully planned his out.  He knows exactly how to enter a home undetected and how to leave.  He knows how determine which items are safe and plans carefully when to acquire them.  He reads clients’ mail and their diaries, knows their vacation plans and upcoming trips to the dentist.

Martin is OCD in spades.  He has a definite schedule and an acquisition plan for each client.  He takes meticulous care to leave no DNA evidence behind and comes and goes at different times and routes.  He also flosses five times a day and avoids doorknobs.

Besides being OCD and fanatical about hygiene, Martin has a wonderful imagination.  He built an entire persona to sell his acquisitions on eBay.  He dreams that the waitress at his favorite breakfast spot likes him and that her “see you tomorrow” is a date.  He uses this imagination to think through risks and plan his day, but his secret dream is to write.   Martin’s cover story for his friends is that he writes instruction manuals, but he really wants to write novels.

The Plot Thickens….

Martin could continue this way forever except he knocks his client’s electric toothbrush into the toilet.  Appalled at the idea of her using it with residual fecal material, Martin runs to the store, buys a replacement, and almost gets caught returning the replacement.

The plot thickens from here.  Martin took the first step to get involved with his clients and his next step takes him further into their lives.  He saves a surprise birthday party and finds a girl to love.  All well and good, and he can still tell himself that his clients are just that, clients, not people.

Then he discovers one client is being stalked by a rapist.  Now what?  Martin follows his heart and saves the day at considerable cost to him.

Wonderful Characters and Dialogue

Martin is priceless, one of the best characters I’ve come across lately.  The dialogue is outstanding – and realize that most dialogue occurs in Martin’s mind.   It is hard to believe that Something Missing is Matthew Dick’s first novel.  It reads like a polished, complete story, with well-done characters and fast pace.

My thanks to Amy Peveto of Bookzilla for recommending Somethihttp://amzn.to/2HnrtGJng Missing.  It was great, thanks Amy!

4 Stars

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